Lea Carpenter > Quotes

“Asking someone to commit espionage is like asking someone to marry you. You only ask once, and you only ask when you’re certain of the answer.”
― Lea Carpenter, Ilium

“No one had ever taken care of me. Only later would I understand the upside of that.”
― Lea Carpenter, Ilium

“peace comes through a recognition of grace in all men.”
― Lea Carpenter, Ilium

“That's an only-one scenario," someone said. When I asked what he meant he told me, "A situation where the only option is equally seductive and terrifying." Then he said, "You know, removal of a dictator, falling in love, equally seductive and terrifying." See how many things you can think of that fit into that category,”
― Lea Carpenter, Red, White, Blue

“I was thinking about The Year of Magical Thinking, the book that Marcus had left on the bed for me, and how Didion put it, that when life changes, it changes in an instant.”
― Lea Carpenter, Ilium

“Ditchley’s Elizabeth.”
― Lea Carpenter, Ilium

“Or was there someone watching me even earlier, maybe on the day my parents died and left me an orphan, the perfect prey. The orphan who likes the garden. And then she happens to meet the man who bought it. If accidents don’t exist, what do you call that? Fact patterns, as lawyers like to call them, are only linear in retrospect. You can organize a fact pattern to ally with any version of the story.”
― Lea Carpenter, Ilium

“What I admire about Ditchley’s Elizabeth is how Gheeraerts depicted her as she was in all her power. How”
― Lea Carpenter, Ilium

“would explain that fear, and a sense of injustice, often inspires bad actions.”
― Lea Carpenter, Red, White, Blue

“Raja knew ordinary life was as much a fiction as any “cover” story. Ordinary life for Raja was a set of chess pieces without names, of longitudes and latitudes, of “enemies” whose histories of poor choices Raja was committed to setting right. Buddhists live in the moment. Raja lived in game theory.”
― Lea Carpenter, Ilium

“Paying attention is the cardinal sign of love.”
― Lea Carpenter, Red, White, Blue

“I had no idea that there was a difference between a fairy tale and a lie. A fairy tale might break your heart, but it can’t kill you.”
― Lea Carpenter, Ilium

“I remember feeling my right eardrum pop, like someone had run a knife across my collarbone.”
― Lea Carpenter, Ilium

“The oligarchs’ relationship to Russia’s various intelligence agencies is like the color blocks in a Rothko, a carefully calibrated blur.”
― Lea Carpenter, Ilium

“Memory is less binary over time.”
― Lea Carpenter, Ilium

“Ilium was a scriptural reference to the biblical idea that there is a “time to kill.”
― Lea Carpenter, Ilium

“The thing is, when you open a new door in your mind everything can seem unclear, up for new interpretation.”
― Lea Carpenter, Ilium

“Felix talked about his latest math lessons and how he had decided he liked math because “everything is clear. There is, or is not, a right answer. It’s like sports. There is, or is not, a clear winner. There is no problem you cannot solve, if you have the right methods.”
― Lea Carpenter, Ilium

“had one thing in common—they would all be happier for having been, if only briefly, colonized by him. And his world.”
― Lea Carpenter, Ilium

“Motherhood is dynamic but stepmotherhood is consistent, oscillating between silence and exile.”
― Lea Carpenter, Ilium

“If America dies, she will die by suicide,” and then, “You know who said that? Lincoln. Abraham Lincoln.”
― Lea Carpenter, Ilium

“Anyone who met him today would say, *Soldier. Fighter.* They would want him on their team. As a mother she was willing to engage in pride over fear and to admit the possibility that his sacrifice was hers, too. His sacrifice was something she had been able to give her country.”
― Lea Carpenter, Eleven Days

“The young woman was not yet trained, or even particularly educated, but she was dissatisfied, the hallmark of vulnerability.”
― Lea Carpenter, Ilium

“The problem is, when you reinvent yourself for someone else you are reinventing around your idea of what they want, and this will get you into all sorts of trouble.”
― Lea Carpenter, Ilium

“It never occurred to me that the life you have is only in part the life you choose, because the moment you start to think you know what’s coming next, that’s when lightning strikes, shatters those windows, and rain starts to pool on the floor.”
― Lea Carpenter, Ilium

“Confidence,” she said, “is a weapon.”
― Lea Carpenter, Ilium

“The period right before the recruitment of a new asset is defined by the knowledge you are about to change someone’s life. That you will tell every lie you need to tell to do it. You will manipulate, control, abuse, seduce, deny. You will spoil and bribe, you will backflip off any high dive. You will ruthlessly promise her the moon and believe you can deliver it. Above all you will convince her she is operating with free will, she is in control, this is her chance. You will do these things because achieving your goal is far more urgent than any consequences of breaking her heart.”
― Lea Carpenter, Ilium

“Eventually I understood that enlightenment for him was being at peace with internal conflict.”
― Lea Carpenter, Red, White, Blue

“And when that happened, I was ready. I had learned to rely almost entirely on my imagination, which was active, for entertainment and pleasure.”
― Lea Carpenter, Ilium