John Sandford > Quotes

“I'm so horny the crack of dawn isn't safe.”
― John Sandford, Bad Blood

“Oh yeah, I heard you got born again.' she said. 'Which you needed since they fucked up the first time.”
― John Sandford, Rough Country

“Gonna rain like a cow pissin' on a flat rock" [drugstore clerk to detective Virgil Flowers]
Dark of the Moon, p.7”
― John Sandford

“Time passes, but sometimes it beats the shit out of you as it goes.”
― John Sandford, Easy Prey

“Somewhere along the line, it occurred to him that he hadn't spoken to Virgil Flowers. He'd probably taken the day off, and knowing Flowers, he'd done it in a boat. The thing about Flowers was, in Lucas's humble opinion, you could send him out for a loaf of bread and he'd find an illegal bread cartel smuggling in heroin-saturated wheat from Afghanistan. Either that, or he'd be fishing in a muskie tournament, on government time. You had to keep an eye on him.”
― John Sandford, Stolen Prey

“It’s the way of the world, man. There are the worker bees, and the manager bees. The worker bees take care of the work, the manager bees take care of themselves.”
― John Sandford, Field of Prey

“So she made no secret about being gay?"
"Why should she?" the little old lady asked. "Nobody would care but a bunch of stuffy old men.”
― John Sandford, Rough Country

“First she got Jesus, probably fifteen years ago, and that didn’t work out, so she tried Scientology, and that didn’t help, but it cost a lot of money, so she tried Buddhism and yoga, and those didn’t work, so she started drinking. I think that helped, because she’s still drinking.”
― John Sandford, Buried Prey

“If the AG had been a lightbulb instead of a lawyer, he would have been about a twenty-watt.”
― John Sandford, Deadline

“When any worthwhile thing is done in the world, it's usually done by somebody weird.”
― John Sandford, Outrage

“I once defenestrated a guy. The cops got all pissed off at me. I was drunk, but they said that was no excuse."

"Ah well," Virgil said. Then, "The guy hurt bad?"

"Cracked his hip. Landed on a Prius. Really fucked up the Prius, too."

"I can tell you, just now is the only time in my life I ever heard 'defenestration' used in a sentence," Virgil said.

"It's a word you learn after you done it," Morton said. "Yup. The New Prague AmericInn, 2009."

Virgil was amazed. "Really? The defenstration of New Prague?”
― John Sandford, Mad River

“They were shot with a shotgun and put in garbage bags and thrown under a bridge," Shrake said. "If it wasn't murder, it was a really weird accident.”
― John Sandford, Storm Prey

“The thing about Botox is that when you've had too much, you then have to fake reactions just to look human--and it's impossible to distinguish real fake reactions from fake fake reactions.”
― John Sandford, Invisible Prey

“Fuck golf anyway. Stupid goddamn game, chasing a ball around a perfectly good cow pasture.”
― John Sandford, Holy Ghost

“Nuts don’t come in bunches. Only grapes do.”
― John Sandford, Shock Wave

“If there were honorary degrees for assholes, he’d be a doctor of everything,” Lily said.”
― John Sandford, Shadow Prey

“Flowers said, “I got two bottles of water in the car.”
“Get them. And get your gun,” Lucas said.
“The gun? You think?”
“No. I just like to see you wearing the fuckin’ gun for a change,” Lucas said. “C’mon, let’s get moving.”
― John Sandford, Invisible Prey

“Her Pan-Cake makeup was cracking like a dried-out Dakota lake bed.”
― John Sandford, Rules Of Prey

“Does Raggedy Ann have a cotton crotch?”
― John Sandford, Silent Prey

“I used to be a Catholic, and when I first started police work, I worried about that. I saw a lot of people dead or dying for no apparent reason . . . not people I killed, just people. Little kids who'd drowned, people dying in auto accidents and with heart attacks and strokes. I saw a lineman burn to death, up on a pole, little bits and pieces, and nobody could help . . . . I watched them go, screaming and crying and sometimes just lying there with their tongues stuck out, heaving, with all the screaming and hollering from friends and relatives . . . and I never saw anyone looking beyond. I think, Michael, I think they just blink out. That's all. I think they go where the words on a computer screen go, when you turn it off. One minute they exist, maybe they're even profound, maybe the result of a great deal of work. The next . . . . Whiff. Gone.”
― John Sandford, Eyes of Prey

“Cinnamon Girl" wasn't right for this day, for this time, for what was about to happen. If he were to have music, he thought, maybe Shostakovich, a few measures from the Lyric Waltz in Jazz Suite Number 2. Something sweet, yet pensive, with a taste of tragedy; Qatar was an intellectual, and he knew his music.”
― John Sandford, Chosen Prey

“I'll bring pajamas " she said.
"Yeah? You have any idea how old I am?"
"Not nearly as old as you're gonna be by midnight.”
― John Sandford, Chosen Prey

“The press conference was held in a courtroom at the new county courthouse, a space that did its best to translate justice into laminated wood.”
― John Sandford, Shock Wave

“Even thinking was hard.”
― John Sandford, Naked Prey

“Lucas’s position was supine: that is, whenever he heard people arguing about it, he wanted to lie down and take a nap.”
― John Sandford, Buried Prey

“Detective Virgil and Barlow [bomb-technician] arranged to meet at the Starbucks. Virgil got a grande hot chocolate, no-fat milk, no foam, no whipped cream, and Barlow got a venti latte with an extra shot. As they took a corner table, Virgil said, “Remind me not to stand next to you if you’re handling a bomb. That much caffeine, you gotta be shakin’ like a hundred-dollar belly dancer.”
“At least I’m not drinking like a little girl,” Barlow said.”
― John Sandford, Shock Wave

“....there are as many nuts on the left as there are on the right, and in the long run, the lefties are probably more dangerous.”
― John Sandford, The Devil's Code

“he thought a bit about God, and whether He might be some kind of universal digital computer, subject to the occasional bug or hack. Was it possible that politicians and hedge-fund operators were some kind of garbled cosmic computer code? That the Opponent, instead of having horns and a forked tail, was a fat bearded guy drinking Big Gulps and eating anchovy pizzas and writing viruses down in a hellish basement? That prayers weren’t answered because Satan was running denial-of-service attacks?”
― John Sandford, Mad River

“Some people would say bullshit is the grease that gets people through life,” Weather said. “Other people,” Letty said. “Not me.”
― John Sandford, The Investigator

“Does a chicken have lips?”
― John Sandford, Bad Blood