Harry Brandt > Quotes

“The meat's so tough that it got up off the plate and beat the shit out of the coffee, which was too weak to defend itself.”
― Harry Brandt

“Castro inhaled again, blew out enough smoke to announce a pope.”
― Harry Brandt, The Whites

“His wife would never admit it to him, but Billy’s guess was that interns killed patients all the time, and their supervisors, with an eye for the long-term healer to come, mainly looked the other way. Well, it was the same with him. In order to get the greater job done, to mold your people as you saw fit and prepare them to effectively do the job in the years to come, you tolerated error, you turned a not-quite-blind eye to the actions of others and to your own actions. You created secrets and you kept secrets. Out on the streets, same thing: depending on the individual and the situation, sometimes you threw the Thor hammer at a misdemeanor, other times you let an individual walk who had no right to sleep in his own bed that night. You did all these things and more because as a boss, if you weren’t willing to play fast and loose when required, if you weren’t willing to make a discreet hash of the rule book now and then, on this job you might as well call in sick. That’s just the way it was. *”
― Harry Brandt, The Whites

“Hey,” Pavlicek held on, “what’s the most bullshit word in the English language.” “Closure.” “Give that man a cigar,” Pavlicek said, then hung up.”
― Harry Brandt, The Whites

“Somebody had angrily scrawled DOPE HOUSE with a broad Sharpie above the apartment 6G peephole in the Truman Houses.
"The quality goes in before the name goes on," the CSU tech standing next to Billy said before entering the scene.”
― Harry Brandt

“Pavlicek said to the space between the”
― Harry Brandt, The Whites

“As CSU continued to bag and photograph, as the LIRR and Transit detectives and his own crew began to work the waiting room, wandering among the semiconscious potential wits like a squadron of visiting nurses, Billy noticed that one of the commuters sleeping there had what appeared to be blood on his Rangers jersey.”
― Harry Brandt, The Whites

“Carla and a Maria—are you sure Marilys”
― Harry Brandt, The Whites

“This was how the slow process of ending a fight always began for them, with a sullen agreement to tolerate each other’s presence while engaged in a nonverbal activity, during which, at some point, one of them would make a not-quite-spontaneous comment about something unrelated to the argument, something safe, delivered in an offhand monotone, that didn’t require a response but usually got one, also to be delivered in the same flatline tone. From there, the exchanges, always off the subject of the fight, would gradually begin to pick up speed until they were actually talking and that monotone was replaced by the natural oscilloscope of unself-conscious human speech. Formal apologies, if the situation really demanded it, usually came later in another room or, if they could get away with it, never, neither of them wanting to risk another potentially volatile encounter if it wasn’t necessary.”
― Harry Brandt, The Whites

“Well, this wasn’t one of my better ideas, was it.’ He flies home the next day, it’s really a nothing”
― Harry Brandt, The Whites

“ho-shitting,”
― Harry Brandt, The Whites