Jason Matthews > Quotes

“I’ve always loved Russian humor,” said Nate. “It’s a shame there’s so little of it.”
― Jason Matthews, Red Sparrow

“Let me continue the Sisyphean task of expanding your vocabulary. One feels empathy when one has been there; sympathy when one has not.”
― Jason Matthews, Palace of Treason

“Benford’s office looked like the atelier”
― Jason Matthews, Red Sparrow

“two girls buying sausages. The butcher has no change, so he gives them an extra sausage. ‘What are we going to do with the third sausage?’ whispers one girl. ‘Quiet,’ her friend says. ‘We’ll eat that one.’ ”
― Jason Matthews, Red Sparrow

“One feels empathy when one has been there; sympathy when one has not.”
― Jason Matthews, Palace of Treason

“BRISTOL HOTEL CUCUMBER SALAD Peel and seed halved cucumbers and slice thinly. Finely chop red onion and one chili pepper. Mix in bowl with white cider vinegar, salt, pepper, sugar, dill weed, and a drop of sesame oil. Serve chilled.”
― Jason Matthews, Red Sparrow

“I will be a little bitchy from now on," she said "Zlobnyj”
― Jason Matthews, Red Sparrow

“I have consulted the Gregorian, Julian, and Coptic calendars and conclude there is not enough time before the next solstice for me to enumerate the ways you have been stupid,”
― Jason Matthews, The Kremlin's Candidate

“Her parents noticed, when Dominika turned five, that the little girl had a prodigious memory. She could recite lines from Pushkin, identify the concertos of Tchaikovsky. And when music was played, Dominika would dance barefoot around the Oriental carpet in the living room, perfectly in time with the notes, twirling and jumping, perfectly in balance, her eyes gleaming, her hands flashing. Vassily and Nina looked at each other, and her mother asked Dominika how she had learned all this. “I follow the colors,” said the little girl.
“What do you mean, ‘the colors’?” asked her mother. Dominika gravely explained that when the music played, or when her father read aloud to her, colors would fill the room. Different colors, some bright, some dark, sometimes they “jumped in the air” and all Dominika had to do was follow them. It was how she could remember so much. When she danced, she leapt over bars of bright blue, followed shimmering spots of red on the floor. The parents looked at each other again.
“I like red and blue and purple,” said Dominika. “When Batushka reads, or when Mamulya plays, they are beautiful.”
“And when Mama is cross with you?” asked Vassily.
“Yellow, I don’t like the yellow,” said the little girl, turning the pages of a book. “And the black cloud. I do not like that.”
― Jason Matthews, Red Sparrow

“The long and short of it, Nate,” said Gable later in his office, “is shut the fuck up.”
― Jason Matthews, Red Sparrow

“GREEK STRAPATSADA EGGS In heated olive oil reduce peeled, chopped tomatoes, onions, sugar, salt, and pepper to a thick sauce. Add beaten eggs to the tomatoes and stir vigorously until eggs set into a small, fine curd. Serve with grilled country bread drizzled with olive oil.”
― Jason Matthews, Red Sparrow

“Dvorets v Izmene,” said Dominika under her breath.
Benford looked over at Nate, one eyebrow raised.
“Palace of Treason,” Nate said.
“Works for me,” said Gable.”
― Jason Matthews, Palace of Treason

“Since light travels faster than sound, some people appear bright until you hear them speak,”
― Jason Matthews, The Kremlin's Candidate

“Vilami na vode pisano, the future is written with a pitchfork on flowing water. No one knows what’s going to happen.”
― Jason Matthews, Palace of Treason

“BAKED CAMEMBERT WITH CARAMELIZED ONIONS Take a wheel of Camembert out of its box and make a shallow X incision through the top skin. Insert slivered garlic and thyme sprigs. Put the cheese back into its wooden box, drizzle with olive oil (or white wine or vermouth), place on baking sheet, and bake in a medium oven until the cheese is runny all the way through. Serve with sliced onions caramelized in butter and balsamic vinegar.”
― Jason Matthews, Palace of Treason

“Gable was a legend. He was loyal to his assets, then to his friends, then to the CIA, in that order. There was nothing he hadn’t seen, and he knew what was important.”
― Jason Matthews, Red Sparrow

“Do Boga vysoko, do Tsarya daleko, God is high up, and the tsar is far away,” she whispered. Anything can happen, and there’s no remedy.”
― Jason Matthews, Palace of Treason

“Russians. They hate foreigners only a little less than they hate themselves, and they’re born conspirators. Oh, they know very well they’re superior, but your Russki is insecure, wants to be respected, to be feared like the old Soviet Union. They need recognition, and they hate their second-tier status in the superpower stakes. That’s why Putin’s putting together USSR 2.0, and no one is going to stand in his way.”
― Jason Matthews, Red Sparrow

“Perhaps I will have a bakery someday named Dominika’s, she thought. Idiot you don’t know how to bake.”
― Jason Matthews, The Kremlin's Candidate

“I don’t know what’s wrong with you, Gondorf, but I bet it’s hard to pronounce,”
― Jason Matthews, The Kremlin's Candidate

“This motherfucking parallel parking.”
― Jason Matthews, Red Sparrow

“BLINIS SERVED AT VASSILY EGOROV’S WAKE Season one cup flour with baking powder and kosher salt. Add milk, egg, and clarified butter, and blend into a smooth batter. Cook a tablespoon of the batter at a time over medium low heat until blini are golden on both sides. Serve topped with red caviar, salmon, crème fraîche, sour cream, and fresh dill.”
― Jason Matthews, Red Sparrow

“God, she’s serious, thought Nate. Typical Russian, afraid of putting a foot wrong. But he liked her reserve, her underlying sensuality, the way she looked at him with her blue eyes. He especially liked the way she pronounced his name, “Neyt.”
― Jason Matthews, Red Sparrow

“OKROSHKA—COLD CUCUMBER SOUP Process peeled and seeded cucumbers, green onions, chopped hard boiled eggs, fresh dill, sour cream, and water to make a soup of granular consistency. Optionally add cubes of cooked ham. Season, chill, and serve garnished with dill or mint.”
― Jason Matthews, Palace of Treason

“What he lacked in stature he amply made up for in venom.”
― Jason Matthews, Red Sparrow

“She hoped she would be lying on a sun-drenched veranda somewhere tropical, sipping rum while Nate painted her toenails Island Pink and, maybe, she dreamed, with a little girl at their feet chattering to her dolls in Russian and English. Would my children be synesthetes? What would Nate say after all these years of keeping the secret? Would we be happy together? Will it ever happen?”
― Jason Matthews, The Kremlin's Candidate

“She hadn’t foreseen this. (She knew he certainly had not.) In her service as well as his, Dominika knew it was zapreshchennyi, strictly forbidden, to become physically involved with an agent. Emotional complications are death to a clandestine operation. It’s not for no reason they whisk the Sparrow from the room after the honey trap and “Uncle Sasha” takes over, all business, because passions get in the way, you can’t get anywhere with an agent who is thinking about his khuy, the old instructors used to say, cackling and trying to get her to blush.
She was in his arms, kissing him, not frantically, but slowly, softly; his lips were warm and she wanted to drink them in. She felt a pressure building in her body, inside her skull, in her breasts, between her legs. His hands pressed on her back and she felt sweet and edgy, as if they were childhood friends who years later had discovered each other as adults. He breathed deep purple heat into her ear, and she felt it down her spine.”
― Jason Matthews, Red Sparrow

“A frightened man came to the KGB. ‘My talking parrot disappeared,’ he said. ‘This is not our case,’ says the KGB, ‘go to the criminal police.’ ‘Excuse me,’ says the man. ‘Of course I know I have to go to the criminal police. I am here just to tell you officially that I disagree with that parrot.”
― Jason Matthews, Red Sparrow

“An instant flashing thought: What would Bratok, big brother Gable, one of her CIA handlers, think about this temper of hers? Then, electrically, a second thought: What would all her Americans feel as they watched her in this reeking stairwell doing this.”
― Jason Matthews, Palace of Treason

“It was intensely interesting to Zyuganov, one sort of monster, to see Eva, a derivative miscreation, put her head back and laugh, with the sound of a bag of cleavers bouncing down a flight of stairs.”
― Jason Matthews, Palace of Treason