30 quotes
Assassination is just diplomacy by other means.
Emissaries From the Dead (2008)
Management’s never been interested in really doing the job, not at any point in human history. Management’s true agenda has always been making things more pleasant for Management.
Emissaries From the Dead (2008)
It occurred to me a long time ago, Mr. Lastogne, that diplomacy has very little to do with making friends.
Emissaries From the Dead (2008)
Middle management has always favored underlings friendly to middle management. It’s corruption, all right, but of a minor and probably unavoidable sort.
Emissaries From the Dead (2008)
Life with too many miracles is just another form of chaos.
A Desperate Decaying Darkness (2000)
They all wore the slack-bored expression of folks doomed to spend all of eternity on an infinitely long supermarket checkout line.
A Desperate Decaying Darkness (2000)
“Any messages?”
Oscin said, “Just a lot of people dreading whatever you plan to do next.”
Emissaries From the Dead (2008)
She’s a little bit below mediocre, isn’t she? And the worst kind of below-par personality at that: the kind who believes herself destined for great things.
Emissaries From the Dead (2008)
It’s almost comical. Nobody knew anything, but everybody took that as proof of the hypothesis.
Emissaries From the Dead (2008)
Like all career diplomats, he’d spent a lifetime sculpting the truth into the shapes that best suited the needs of the moment, and would see nothing wrong with doing the same now.
An Alien Darkness (2000)
Art isn’t just technique, in any culture…it’s also Content. It’s understanding not just How, but also What, to express.
An Alien Darkness (2000)
I could only read the delay as a dramatic pause. Theatrics. Or diplomacy; wise men throughout history had already noticed that sometimes there wasn’t much of a difference between the two.
Emissaries From the Dead (2008)
Cottonmouth was the kind of small town that hugs its knees to its chest and shuts out all evidence of a greater world beyond.
A Desperate Decaying Darkness (2000)
She thought everybody in the whole wide world was obligated to rearrange their lives to avoid doing anything that ran even a miniscule chance of offending her.
An Alien Darkness (2000)
Every once in a while, some poor bastard get saddled with the kind of impossible decision that destroys his career and makes his name a curse for the next hundred years.
An Alien Darkness (2000)
In short, they were like the complacent everywhere: in that they were already dead, and did not yet happen to know it…
An Alien Darkness (2000)
“Are you refusing a direct order?”
“Tell me to die for no good reason and I’ll do more than refuse, I’ll shove the order up your ass.”
Emissaries From the Dead (2008)
“In my experience, mediocrity in life-or-death situations gets people killed.”
He looked knowing. “Read your history. Greatness kills more.”
There was nothing I could say to that.
Emissaries From the Dead (2008)
It was the sort of platitude-laden gibberish that people learn to repeat so they can imagine themselves clever without ever bothering to think an original thought themselves.
An Alien Darkness (2000)
“You know what murder investigators call the ex-lover who says the dead woman slept around?”
“I think I can guess.”
“The most likely suspect.”
Emissaries From the Dead (2008)