243 quotes
“I don’t hide anything I aim to do; I just come right out and say it.” An alarm whistle went off in Anne’s head; any man who said something like that was almost bound to be lying.
Southern Victory (1997)
“Do you see things in black and white, or are there shades of gray for you?”
“I hope there’s gray, Menefee said. “Black and white make things easier, but only if you don’t want to think.”
Southern Victory (1997)
“We’re in a race, and we’d better win.”
Eight words. As far as Flora could see, they said everything that needed saying.
Southern Victory (1997)
He was a pretty fair officer, no doubt about it, but he wasn’t as smart as he thought he was.
Of course, when you got right down to it, who was?
Southern Victory (1997)
But when he ached, when he panted, when the world was too much with him, Marx and revolution held a wild temptation. Like cheap booze for a drunk, he thought wearily, except revolutions make people do even stupider things.
Southern Victory (1997)
The only happy people she saw coming out of the place were a young couple, the man carrying a crying baby. Maternity wards are different, Nellie thought as she went past them. I bet they’re the only place in a hospital where people win instead of losing.
Southern Victory (1997)
Impasse. Stuart hated impasses. He hated ambiguity of any kind. The older he got, the more ambiguity he saw in the world. He hated that, too.
Southern Victory (1997)
It was enough to make a man with a conscience feel guilty.
Of course, a man with that kind of conscience had no business getting into Intelligence in the first place.
Southern Victory (1997)
What did he do for fun? Anything? Poor bastard, Sam thought. Zwilling probably got his kicks telling other people what to do. If that wasn’t a dead-end street, Sam had never seen one.
Southern Victory (1997)
“I know something you don’t know.”…
“Oh, yeah? What’s that?” Fishbein bristled at the very idea.
“I know you talk too goddamn much.”
Southern Victory (1997)
When a politician, which was what the president of the CSA had long since become, said he was personally in sympathy with something, Jackson had learned, he meant the opposite.
Southern Victory (1997)
Cincinnatus stared at him. That had to be the most cynical assessment he'd ever heard in his life, and he'd heard a lot of them. But, along with the cynicism, it made a lot more sense than he wished it did.
Southern Victory (1997)
“Won’t it be fine, getting to spend Christmas somewhere near the edge of civilization?”
“Yes, sir,” his aide-de-camp agreed enthusiastically. “If El Paso isn’t civilization, at least it’s on the railroad line to it.”
Southern Victory (1997)
He’d escaped the last dragnet as much by luck as by anything else. You could tell a man not to be stupid, and maybe—if he wasn’t stupid to begin with—he’d listen. But how the devil could you tell a man not to be unlucky?
Southern Victory (1997)
If you happened to end up in the wrong place at the wrong instant, you could be the best soldier in the world and it wouldn't matter one goddamn bit. Your next of kin would get a wire from the War Department, and that would be that.
Southern Victory (1997)
She hated the calendar, hated the mirror and what it showed her every morning. A handsome woman, that’s what you are. She would almost rather have been ugly. Then she wouldn’t have to remember the beauty she had been not so long ago.
Southern Victory (1997)
Quantity had a quality of its own.
Southern Victory (1997)
Nothing was worse than a battlefield. Nothing could be. He was convinced of that. The devil hadn't known how to run hell before he took a long look at a Great War battlefield.
Southern Victory (1997)
When you got past fifty, you had to take care of yourself the way you took care of a motorcar. You’d break down if you didn’t, and replacement parts for your carcass were mighty hard to come by.
Southern Victory (1997)
Like any Vice President, Charlie La Follette was the very definition of an unknown quantity.
Southern Victory (1997)