Tom Wood > Quotes

“Victor waited until Ozols had passed out of the light before squeezing the trigger with smooth, even pressure. Suppressed gunshots interrupted the early morning stillness. Ozols was hit in the sternum, twice in rapid succession. The bullets were low powered, subsonic 5.7 mm, but larger rounds could have been no more fatal. Copper-encased lead tore through skin, bone, and heart before lodging side by side between vertebrae. Ozols collapsed backward, hitting the ground with a dull thud, arms outstretched, head rolling to one side. Victor melted out of the darkness and took a measured step forward. He angled the FN Five-seveN and put a bullet through Ozols’s temple. He was already dead, but in Victor’s opinion there was no such thing as overkill.”
― Tom Wood, The Hunter

“Funny, because the way I see it, the more friends I have, the better I’m doing at life.” “Ah,” Victor said, “but friends can be bought. Enemies are always earned.”
― Tom Wood, A Time To Die

“No one was infallible, but mistakes had to be acknowledged and absorbed with a conscious self-examination if they were to become useful experience and not remain as failure.”
― Tom Wood, A Time To Die

“He’s like an apparition, appearing now and again: a rumor, a myth. Hearsay. Not verified. Not real. You have to want to believe in him to see that he exists at all.”
― Tom Wood, The Final Hour

“Once you’ve sold your soul to the devil you can’t then ask for it back.”
― Tom Wood, The Hunter

“Victor stepped away from the spy hole of the door opposite and raised his gun. He fired, squeezing the trigger ten times in rapid succession, emptying the magazine of exactly half its ammunition. The hotel door was thick, solid pine, but the bullets in the FiveseveN were shaped like rifle rounds and cut through it with barely any loss in velocity. Two heavy objects hit the carpet, one thud after the other. The door creaked in front of him.”
― Tom Wood, The Hunter

“The partition window opened. Panic flooded through him and he twisted in his seat to see Kooi’s wife. She had a gun, pointed through the little window and at his head. ‘We can talk about this,’ Leeson said, swallowing. ‘I can make you a very wealthy woman.’ She said, ‘Put your hands over your ears, Peter, and close your eyes.”
― Tom Wood, The Game

“They were all dressed in suits, long coats, carrying briefcases. City drones on their way to service the hive.”
― Tom Wood, The Killer

“You don’t know it yet, and no one ever told me at your age, but eventually you’ll reach a point in life where you have no new thoughts, you experience no new sensations. Everything you do, everything you say, you’ve done and said a thousand times before. And then you have the indignity of spending the rest of your days as a broken fucking record.”
― Tom Wood, No Tomorrow

“We enter this life not knowing we exist. We leave it wondering what that existence meant.”
― Tom Wood, The Final Hour

“Her voice was even, but quiet. ‘You’re not going to let me go, are you?’ His was the same. ‘No, I’m not.’ She took a breath and stood to face him. Her amazing eyes seemed polished in the dim light. ‘Don’t keep me waiting.”
― Tom Wood, A Time to Die

“Middle”
― Tom Wood, The Enemy

“In a life threatening situation, whether terrorism or a rockslide, what kills most people is slowness to react. Regular lives are so safe, so event-less that there is a lack of comprehension when faced with death. It's not necessarily shock. It's disbelief. It's dismissal. Civilians say to themselves, I've got this wrong, this isn't what I think. But it is, and by the time they've realized, it's too late. And of course sometimes they do in fact have it wrong. They've misread the situation, and they're left embarrassed and maybe ashamed. But....." "But they're alive," Mayes finished.”
― Tom Wood, The Final Hour

“where it had dark and light patches of sun damage. Unlike many of his crew, Castel never wore a bandana, and helmets were not only a sign of weakness but one of incompetence. Good riders didn’t come off their hogs, went the logic.”
― Tom Wood, A Quiet Man

“The rifle was disassembled into its component parts, with its stock, barrel, grip, and scope separate to allow it to fit inside a standard-sized briefcase. There was also a long suppressor. Victor’s was the latest variant of the SVD, with stock and hand guards made from high-density polymer to lighten the weight, instead of the original wood furniture. Though not as sophisticated or accurate at long range as some Western sniper rifles, Victor had a fondness for the Dragunov because of its reliability in all conditions and its no-nonsense mechanics. As a semi-automatic rifle, the Dragunov had a much better rate of fire than a typical bolt-action sniper rifle, though the greater number of moving parts that made the rifle semi-automatic also made it less accurate than a bolt-action. But as a semi-auto the SVD could also be used as an assault rifle and was fitted with conventional iron sights and bayonet mount for just such a use. The Soviet philosophy on arms manufacture had been ease of use and reliability over accuracy, and Victor had found there to be a lot of merit in the ideal. Weapons that were world beaters on the range weren’t much use if they didn’t work under battlefield conditions”
― Tom Wood, The Hunter

“Anderton smiled at him and he matched the smile. She handed him her card and he took it without the slightest hesitation. This pleased her. Not because she wanted him to like her, but because he was a once”
― Tom Wood, Better Off Dead

“Victor’s shadow fell over her and she looked up. She was surprisingly attractive, twenty-eight or — nine, pain in her delicate features, terror in her piercing eyes. She stared at him, gaze pleading, tears spilling down her cheeks, lips he would have liked to kiss, moving but making no sound, not enough air in her lungs to speak, to beg. Or to tell him anything useful. He spared a moment to consider how someone like her could have ended up in this business. But whatever her story had been, it was about to have a depressing end. Her head shook slowly from side to side. The smoking cartridge bounced on the floor tiles.”
― Tom Wood, The Hunter

“What are you?’ Rados asked. ‘You don’t strike me as the bone-breaker type.’ ‘I think of myself as a counsellor.’ ‘And what is it on which you offer counsel?’ ‘Whether a person remains alive or not.”
― Tom Wood, A Time to Die

“We think we’re good at reading each other,” Victor replied. “But more often than not we are in fact projecting our own feelings and mistaking self-awareness for perception.”
― Tom Wood, A Time To Die

“No exterior sounds were audible to dilute the glorious music that emanated from the Rolls-Royce’s top of the range sound system. The London Philharmonic Orchestra Choir were performing a stirring rendition of Thomas Tallis’s Gaude gloriosa Dei Mater. Leeson sipped twenty-four-year-old single malt and sang along in Latin. As the anthem finished he dabbed his watery eyes with an Egyptian cotton handkerchief and thumbed a button on the console to mute the speakers before he was enraptured by more beauteous sound. Tallis made Mozart and Beethoven seem like amateurs.”
― Tom Wood, The Game

“Reed”
― Tom Wood, The Killer

“the god he had never believed in that his mind wasn’t going. Back in bed, he finished off the Scotch and dropped his newspaper on the floor. He settled himself into his usual sleeping position and flicked off the lamp. He searched with his cheek for a smooth area”
― Tom Wood, The Killer

“It doesn’t matter what I know about you because I’m never going to become a threat to you. Because you’re here to kill me, aren’t you?’ ‘Yes,’ Victor said.”
― Tom Wood, A Time to Die

“I like that quote, but Napoleon was a fool, drunk on his own perceived invincibility. He could have ruled the world had he but known humility.’ ‘Are you humble?’ The Serbian thought about this. ‘I have no desire to rule the world.”
― Tom Wood, A Time to Die

“McClury folded back the rifle’s bipod and stood, disturbing the light covering of snow that lay across his body. His weapon was an Accuracy International L96, a bolt-action rifle made by the Brits. In McClury’s opinion one of the best all-round rifles in the world for this type of work. Precise and powerful but not too big or heavy. He’d used enough of them in the past to qualify his opinion. He wore white Gore-Tex pants, a jacket with a hood, and a white ski mask. The rifle’s furniture had been wrapped in strips of white electrical tape. McClury unbuttoned and unzipped the jacket and threw it off. It was camouflage and protection against the cold but impeded movement. Underneath he wore a black thermal shirt. He felt the chill immediately, but for now he could live with it. He left the white ski mask in place. His hide was a little under five hundred yards away, overlooking the target’s chalet. McClury had been set up just under the crest of a snowy outcrop dotted with trees to hide his silhouette and to make him virtually invisible.”
― Tom Wood, The Hunter

“its”
― Tom Wood, The Killer

“, ‘who got out before you did, offers you a different kind of private-sector job. Kind of like what you used to do for Uncle Sam, only it paid better than even babysitting reporters. Given its nature, you were hesitant, maybe even said no to start with, but your friend convinced you this was a bad guy so you would actually be doing some good. And it worked out great. So great, you ended up doing another, and another, and before long that’s all you’re doing. Each time the money goes up and the voice in the back of your head gets quieter and quieter until you can’t even remember what it used to say.’ Victor paused. ‘Before you know it, you’re a contract killer.”
― Tom Wood, The Enemy

“The kitchen had no toaster or kettle or microwave or other labour-saving device. In a cupboard he found a set of three rugged iron camping pans – small, medium and large. In another he found a twelve-piece crockery set. The only food he found was an unopened box of cereal. There were enough carbohydrates contained within to keep a person alive for a long time.”
― Tom Wood, The Darkest Day

“It was almost impossible to operate with the best gear. The most effective weapons were the ones most hardest to obtain. More often than not, he had to make do".”
― Tom Wood, The Final Hour

“Gisele was breathing rapidly but shallowly. Scared, but in control. She was wasted as a lawyer, Victor thought. She had the talent to be an exceptional assassin.”
― Tom Wood, Better Off Dead