Jordan Harper > Quotes

“She had a teddy bear in her arms and murder in her eyes.”
― Jordan Harper, She Rides Shotgun

“He could have laughed at how fucked up life was. That soon as you found something to live for, you found something to die for too. But he guessed in the end it was a good trade.”
― Jordan Harper, She Rides Shotgun

“You got to feel weak to get strong. Don’t run away from it.”
― Jordan Harper, She Rides Shotgun

“It was an intimate moment, this moment between robber and victim. A gun to the head made you naked.”
― Jordan Harper, She Rides Shotgun

“She buried her head in a towel. She scrubbed, not just her hair, but her face too, the towel scratching, pressing it into the sockets of her eyes until she saw color galaxies be born and die in the dark behind her eyelids.”
― Jordan Harper, She Rides Shotgun

“You know the difference between a million and a billion? A million seconds is eleven days. A billion seconds is thirty-two years. Kyser has billions, man.”
― Jordan Harper, Everybody Knows

“He had men for hands. It only took a few days all told before the posters came to a man with a throat-cut tattoo and fuck-you-money ambitions. Addresses were compiled. Plans made. Weapons secured. Blood pacts sealed. His will be done.”
― Jordan Harper, She Rides Shotgun

“She thought it was the police who were really missing. They were the ones who weren’t where they were supposed to be, which was coming to get her.”
― Jordan Harper, She Rides Shotgun

“It didn’t matter that it wasn’t real. It only mattered that it was true.”
― Jordan Harper, She Rides Shotgun

“Most people who facilitate things like this hate themselves for doing it—and they think that makes it okay. Like it’s not really them who is doing it.”
― Jordan Harper, Everybody Knows

“Either you teach her how to take a punch or the world does.”
― Jordan Harper, She Rides Shotgun

“The underpass was a tent city. The people living there dirty faced and unfed. Refugees of a war only they knew about.”
― Jordan Harper, She Rides Shotgun

“It’s the best part of not being real.”
― Jordan Harper, She Rides Shotgun

“Polygraphs don’t detect lies. They detect fear.”
― Jordan Harper, Everybody Knows

“This feeling washes over her, this soul-deep wish to just go back to when she could walk through this burning world without noticing it’s on fire.”
― Jordan Harper, Everybody Knows

“Sometimes I hear Mark laugh, and some days in the car the right song will come on the satellite radio and I'll feel him there tingling like a phantom limb. Like he's sitting there next to me in the dark. But I know that's not so. And I know that when you die there's not even darkness, and I know Mark and me won't meet on some cloud or in some pit of fire. And I guess that's a good thing. I couldn't take those eyes seeing what's become of me, those eyes looking down at my hands and my chewed-up ragged nails.”
― Jordan Harper, Love and Other Wounds

“Terror’s what you feel when you’re running from the wolf. Horror’s what you feel while you watch the wolf feeding on your guts. Showing you what you’re really made of.”
― Jordan Harper

“LA traffic is like quicksand—struggling just makes you sink faster.”
― Jordan Harper, Everybody Knows

“It’s weird,” Tze says. “Like, he’s still in my phone. Do I delete him? It seems wrong. But like someday my contacts are going to be half dead people and that is weird too, right? Like we’re all going to be carrying these little graveyards around with us. Like we’re even going to be around that long.”
― Jordan Harper, Everybody Knows

“You got to feel weak to get strong.”
― Jordan Harper, She Rides Shotgun

“Stolen land gulping stolen water. Streets paved with corpses. We even went and massacred the sky: smog strangles the air; light pollution buries the stars.”
― Jordan Harper, A Violent Masterpiece

“He saw how cops lied to suspects”
― Jordan Harper, A Violent Masterpiece

“Brass and the DAs are the true villains in a cop’s life. The knuckleheads are just the product they trade in.”
― Jordan Harper, Everybody Knows

“She felt something strange, a thrumming in her muscles, a thrumming in her mind. It took her a second to find the word for what she felt. It was a word she hadn't gotten to use for herself in a long time. The word was power.”
― Jordan Harper, She Rides Shotgun

“This is how it is with white clients — they get outraged the moment something that has existed their whole lives suddenly turns around and touches them. Gibson tries to think about the last time he had a white client. He draws a blank.”
― Jordan Harper, A Violent Masterpiece

“He’s forty-one. He’s huge in a way that used to say offensive lineman—these days he’s trending toward ogre. He’s in a 3XL tracksuit. His hair is uncombed; his skin is pale under a patchy beard. He is a fist on someone else’s arm.”
― Jordan Harper, Everybody Knows

“The internet is calling for a woman’s blood so you’re putting it on tap.” “What”
― Jordan Harper, A Violent Masterpiece

“This commie state hasn’t killed anybody since 2006. They aren’t going to start with a white man.” “Death row’s death row. It’s no way to spend the rest of your life.”
― Jordan Harper, A Violent Masterpiece

“There’s something in the meth,” Patrick says. “Something from China. It’s driving them all insane.” Patrick’s jaw is cocaine-clenched”
― Jordan Harper, A Violent Masterpiece

“Their eating sounds like a swamp. They make sour faces as they chew. Whale meat is a delicacy in Japan — but these men are not Japanese. They aren’t eating for pleasure”
― Jordan Harper, A Violent Masterpiece