John Sandford Quotes & Sayings

THE EXCHANGE KEPT LUCAS warm all the way out to the car. He'd jump off a high building before he betrayed Weather, but a little extracurricular flirtation kept the blood circulating; not that all of it went to the brain. — John Sandford

Does a chicken have lips? — John Sandford

Catholics don't scream about Jesus, they scream about the bishop. — John Sandford

Got here half an hour ago and had a look, eyeballin' it," Sawyer said. "It's murder, all right. Tell you something else - the sun went down, and it's as dark as the inside of a horses's ass out here."
"You're sure?"
"Well, I've never actually been inside a horses's ass. — John Sandford

....there are as many nuts on the left as there are on the right, and in the long run, the lefties are probably more dangerous. — John Sandford

The local farmers, of course, were bitching because the bean and corn harvests were going to be huge and the prices depressed. Of course, if it hadn't rained, they'd be bitching because their crops were small, even if the prices were high. You couldn't win with farmers. — John Sandford

When the bureaucratic details were handled, they broke up. Del, Shrake, and Jenkins followed him back to his office, where they talked some more about the surveillance aspects. A tech would put a tracking bug on Carver's vehicle, and Del would try to get one on Dannon's, if he could do it without being seen. "The big question is: Is he gonna talk, or is he gonna stonewall, or is he gonna shoot, or is he gonna run?" Jenkins said. "That's four questions," Shrake said. "It irritates me that you can't count. — John Sandford

On the way out to Lawrence's, he thought about Palmer's wild reaction. Was there a little fear there? Hard to tell, with all the other possibilities - anger, bigotry, psychosis. — John Sandford

Flowers said, "I got two bottles of water in the car."
"Get them. And get your gun," Lucas said.
"The gun? You think?"
"No. I just like to see you wearing the fuckin' gun for a change," Lucas said. "C'mon, let's get moving. — John Sandford

I could live here," Del said. "No, you couldn't. You'd turn into a coot and hang out at the general store, with your fly down," Lucas said. "You'd be known for goosing middle-aged women. You'd be the town embarrassment. — John Sandford

Schiffer recoiled: "Oh, Jesus Christ, Taryn, don't give me a heart attack," she said, clutching at her chest. "Remember: no sense of humor. How many times do I have to tell you that: No sense of humor. Humor can get you in all kinds of shit and we've got this won, if we don't get funny. — John Sandford

Her Pan-Cake makeup was cracking like a dried-out Dakota lake bed. — John Sandford

Lucas's position was supine: that is, whenever he heard people arguing about it, he wanted to lie down and take a nap. — John Sandford

Did he ever ask you . . . or suggest to you . . . that he might want to pull some kind of dirty trick on Senator Smalls?" "Oh, no, he would never have done that," Fey said. "I mean, he might have tried to pull a dirty trick, but he wouldn't have spoken to me about it. I like Senator Smalls and Robert knew that. The senator and I have common interests. He likes classical piano and he likes Postimpressionist art. If Robert had asked me to do a dirty trick on Senator Smalls, I would have refused and I would have told Senator Smalls. Robert teased me about that. About me being loyal. — John Sandford

bleeding heavily, her eyes flat with — John Sandford

Don't give me any shit about that, Lucas - not with your history," Henderson said, irritated. "No matter what happens with me, I'll get her an impressive-sounding staff job in Washington, something involving Virginia agriculture and natural resources," Henderson said. "I'll buy her some top-end TV training, some good threads, lean on my friends for donations. A hot, female, law-and-order Democrat who carries a gun and has major experience in D.C.? Are you kiddin' me? That Tea Party asshole won't know what hit him. He'll be like Toto in the fuckin' tornado. — John Sandford

If there were honorary degrees for assholes, he'd be a doctor of everything," Lily said. — John Sandford

I don't know. He was hit hard. Bleeding out his mouth, bright red blood, so he probably took a hit to his lung. He was alive when they took him into the operating room . . ." Lucas gave him the details he had, then gave the phone to the highway patrolman, who knew Wood, and Wood confirmed Lucas's status. — John Sandford

Women had been on the verge of taking over the world-the Western world, anyway. Then some sexist pig in Silicon Valley invented the cell phone and women took a sidetrack on which all four billion of them would soon be happily talking to each other twenty-four hours a day, getting nothing else done, and Men Would Be Back. — John Sandford

DDT stood for Dangerous Darrell Thomas. Thomas had given himself the name when he was riding with a motorcycle club and was interviewed for a public radio magazine. The magazine writer got it wrong, though, and referred to him as TDT--Terrible Darrell Thompson--which lost something of its intent when expressed as initials; and since the writer got the last name wrong, too, Thomas never again trusted the media. — John Sandford

bar. Lucas pointed at a stool and said, "Beer? — John Sandford

Dannon brought the .22 up and shot him in the temple. Carver's head bounced off the side window and Dannon shot him again, the .22 shots deafening inside the truck, but hardly audible outside. Carver slumped, his face not even looking surprised. — John Sandford

the truck. Yael was waiting at the front bumper, and as he came up to her, a sheriff's patrol car turned off the road and onto the track and accelerated toward them. Virgil said to Yael, "He's been shot, but he'll live. For the time being, anyway. He says he doesn't know anything — John Sandford

Hey, fuck you," Lucas said. "What!" Pole started to move at Lucas, but saw something in Lucas's eyes that made him take a step back. Bell Wood got between them and Lucas growled, "Stay away from me, asshole. — John Sandford

Lucas tried to be as soft as he could be; it wasn't his natural attitude. "Ambiguous . . . how? Was this a sexual relationship?" "Yes. Twice. I mean, we . . . yes, we slept together twice. When he went away, wherever he went, it's hard to believe that he might be dead, because he was so upbeat when I last saw him. . . . Anyway, I thought maybe the police would ask me about him, but nobody did, and I didn't know what to do about that. I was scared. . . . I didn't know what happened to him, and when he didn't call me Saturday or Sunday, I thought he wasn't interested anymore." "When was the last time you heard from him?" Lucas asked. "Friday night, about . . . nine o'clock," she said. — John Sandford

Does Raggedy Ann have a cotton crotch? — John Sandford

He was conservative, especially on the abortion issue, and he was death on taxes; on the other hand, he had a Clintonesque attitude about women, and even a sense of humor about his own peccadilloes. — John Sandford

said "let's send that fuckin' Flowers up there. He hasn't done anything for us lately."
"He's off today," somebody said.
Davenport said, "So what? — John Sandford

We ain't in California no more," Pilate said. "Every fuckin' body up here's got a gun. Even that old lady in the hamburger shop, shot Michelle. — John Sandford

I'm so horny the crack of dawn isn't safe. — John Sandford

I once defenestrated a guy. The cops got all pissed off at me. I was drunk, but they said that was no excuse."

"Ah well," Virgil said. Then, "The guy hurt bad?"

"Cracked his hip. Landed on a Prius. Really fucked up the Prius, too."

"I can tell you, just now is the only time in my life I ever heard 'defenestration' used in a sentence," Virgil said.

"It's a word you learn after you done it," Morton said. "Yup. The New Prague AmericInn, 2009."

Virgil was amazed. "Really? The defenstration of New Prague? — John Sandford

All right. I'll keep it quiet." "Attaboy. This thing is going to work out, Lucas. For us. It really shouldn't matter whether we get the killer this week or in two weeks. What matters right now is to try to square up this election. Let's focus on that: you do what you do, and let me try to get things straight with the voters. — John Sandford

a few times, and then pushed the screen door open. "Let's go," Stern said. As they crossed the porch — John Sandford

What joke?" "The one about the guy who rolls a wheelbarrow full of sawdust out of a construction site every night." "I don't know that one," Cochran said. Lucas said, "The security guy keeps checking and checking and checking the wheelbarrow, thinking the guy had to be stealing something. Never found anything hidden in the sawdust, and nobody cared about the sawdust. Couple of years later, they bump into each other, and the security guy says, 'Look, it's all in the past, you can tell me now. I know you were stealing something. What was it?' And the guy says, 'Wheelbarrows. — John Sandford

If the AG had been a lightbulb instead of a lawyer, he would have been about a twenty-watt. — John Sandford

You think we could get them around by the pool?" Taryn asked. "Well, we could, but why would we?" "Because it looks rich. The point is, if this hurts me, I'll be hurt with the more conservative voters out here," Taryn said. "The richer ones. I want to make the point, 'I'm one of you.' I've got the liberals no matter what. — John Sandford

Detective Virgil and Barlow [bomb-technician] arranged to meet at the Starbucks. Virgil got a grande hot chocolate, no-fat milk, no foam, no whipped cream, and Barlow got a venti latte with an extra shot. As they took a corner table, Virgil said, "Remind me not to stand next to you if you're handling a bomb. That much caffeine, you gotta be shakin' like a hundred-dollar belly dancer."
"At least I'm not drinking like a little girl," Barlow said. — John Sandford

Gonna rain like a cow pissin' on a flat rock [drugstore clerk to detective Virgil Flowers] Dark of the Moon, p.7 — John Sandford

I am not so afraid that I cannot see the truth. — John Sandford

Most people who are trying to write kind of sit in their basements and pull it out of their imaginations. — John Sandford

If a Martian were watching our television shows, he'd conclude that guns were more common than hammers. They're not evil themselves--they're tools--but everywhere you go, bad people have them. It behooves the righteous to at least know how they work. — John Sandford

Just go outside and look at something and write it down and you'll find it is a very nice piece of writing. — John Sandford

Not a good idea," Lucas said. "I agree, but that's what she's going to do. This Pole guy told her that he holds you responsible for the shooting of his agent." "Right." "Wanna know what she said?" Henderson asked. "Sure." "She said, and I quote, 'You'd probably be better off holding the sniper responsible, don't you think? I certainly would.'" "Good for her," Lucas said. "But this short-walk thing . . . I dunno." "Better than a long one," Lucas said. — John Sandford

was crooked as a sidewinder rattlesnake. "So what — John Sandford

MARLYS WAS A WOMAN of ordinary appearance, if seen in a supermarket or a library, dressed in homemade or Walmart dresses or slacks, a little too heavy, but fighting it, white-haired, ruddy-faced. In her heart, though, she housed a rage that knew no bounds. The rage fully possessed her at times, and she might be seen sitting in her truck at a stoplight, pounding the steering wheel with the palms of her hands, or walking through the noodle aisle at the supermarket with a teeth-baring snarl. She had frightened strangers, who might look at her and catch the flames of rage, quickly extinguished when Marlys realized she was being watched. The rage was social and political and occasionally personal, based on her hatred of obvious injustice, the crushing of the small and helpless by the steel wheels of American plutocracy. — John Sandford

Murdered? Somebody murdered him?" Palmer was agog. A thin, soft man with a pitted nose and a bald, bumpy egg-shaped head dotted with dime-sized freckles, he was wearing jeans and a T-shirt that said, "NSA, Our Customer Service Pledge: You Talk, We Listen. — John Sandford

systems - power, propulsion, communication, life support - were — John Sandford

comment. "Are you sure you've got the — John Sandford

You know, I believe every word you've said, but I don't need this. I've got six officers working for me full-time, plus four reserve deputies and a dog, and the dog got his feet cut up on broken glass yesterday and he's out of it for a week. That means two guys for busy shifts, one guy for others. The dog has the most experience. Not counting the part-timers, he might even be the smartest. I include myself in that. I've never investigated anything more complicated than mailbox theft. — John Sandford

She had to think seriously about Carver and Dannon. Dannon was well under control - he'd been her security man for four years, and for all four years had hungered for her. Not just for sex. He was in love with her. That was useful. Carver was cruder. He didn't want her total being, he just wanted to fuck her. If she wasn't available, somebody else would do. So her grip on him was more precarious. — John Sandford

So she made no secret about being gay?"
"Why should she?" the little old lady asked. "Nobody would care but a bunch of stuffy old men. — John Sandford

Carol Druze Was A Stone Killer. — John Sandford

Carver was truculent: "What's a good part of it? — John Sandford

bit: that there was a possibility of a conspiracy aimed at Michaela Bowden. — John Sandford

I'll bring pajamas " she said.
"Yeah? You have any idea how old I am?"
"Not nearly as old as you're gonna be by midnight. — John Sandford

Focus on our ignorance." She didn't quite grasp the concept. She'd never been ignorant. — John Sandford

I've always been sort of interested in the rural countryside. Things happen out there that are very strange to city dwellers. — John Sandford

There's something about marriage that is not as intensely romantic or interesting as a couple's first meeting. — John Sandford

One of the girls said, "I think you should go now." Virgil stood — John Sandford

Give me the goddamn names, Grace," Lucas said. "C'mon. Please. Talk to me. Save yourself." "Fuck you." - FORD CAME BACK, looked at Lucas, asked, "Get a name?" "Not unless it's 'Fuck you,'" Lucas said. — John Sandford

love of money is the root of all evils.' Timothy, six-ten. — John Sandford

LIKE ANY GOOD MINNESOTAN, Lucas rarely missed the TV weather before going to bed. — John Sandford

You have the feeling that if you get a Pulitzer, you're somehow set for life. — John Sandford

Mount Pleasant was an older town, where no two houses, standing side by side, seemed to come out of the same architectural style, with nineteenth-century Victorians up against pastel-colored postwar ramblers. Most of the houses had traditional flower gardens with marigolds and zinnias, and some with head-high sunflowers. — John Sandford

Thanks, Alice," Grant said, and to Lucas, "I don't like you, and I suspect you don't like me, but try to be fair. Don't stick yourself into this campaign. Don't sabotage me." "I'm not trying - " "Whether you're trying or not, that's the effect," Grant said. "Wait a week or ten days, let the election take place, then do your worst. But give me a chance. I've worked very hard for it. — John Sandford

With most of my books, I'll actually go out and look at the setting. If you describe things carefully, it kind of makes the scene pop. — John Sandford

Quintana had known Tubbs since high school; Tubbs had been one of the slightly nerdy intellectuals on the edge of the popular clique, while Quintana had been metal shop and a football lineman. — John Sandford

He went on like that for a while, and before he was done, Lucas had dismissed him as being ineffectually goofy, although his ideas about the killing were roughly the same as Lucas's own. Holly said he had no idea who on the staff might have been involved with Tubbs, or might be working as a spy. — John Sandford

The woman had thick plastic glasses and looked up at them, eyes large as eggs behind the lenses, and asked, "Jeez, who got murdered? — John Sandford

The Times, whose editorial portentousness approached traumatic constipation, tried to suppress its glee under the bushel basket of feigned sadness that another civil servant had been caught in a sexual misadventure; they hadn't even bothered to use the word "alleged. — John Sandford

Virgil had read once that Grandma Moses was a primitive painter because she thought snow was white. The writer said if you really looked at it, snow was hardly ever white. It mostly was a gentler version of the color of the sky - blue, gray, orange in the evenings and mornings, often with purple shadows. When he looked, sure enough, the guy was right, and Grandma Moses had her head up her ass. — John Sandford

Most people like a little sex in their novels. — John Sandford

And he still had those two big nuts in his pocket that he'd picked up from the Purdys' barn workshop, the one with the green-and-yellow overspray on the floor, a green-and-yellow spray that didn't match the hard green and yellow of the John Deere, but did match the green and yellow of fair fire hydrants . . . and those nuts in his pocket. Why would you need a whole bag of big nuts, but no bolts? You wouldn't - unless they were shrapnel. And that nagging intuition he'd had by the Varied Industries building: he'd been walking by fire hydrants all morning, the same yellow and green as the overspray on the Purdys' barn floor. A bomb. The Purdys had built a bomb. The farm kid who'd been brain-injured by IEDs in Iraq had built himself an IED. A bomb disguised as a fire hydrant that was probably standing on the Concourse, right where the candidates would be marching by, right on the curb. — John Sandford

JENKINS AND VIRGIL walked back up the valley to the Ruff house, and found Muddy inside, tootling on a black electric guitar, a complex — John Sandford

Cinnamon Girl" wasn't right for this day, for this time, for what was about to happen. If he were to have music, he thought, maybe Shostakovich, a few measures from the Lyric Waltz in Jazz Suite Number 2. Something sweet, yet pensive, with a taste of tragedy; Qatar was an intellectual, and he knew his music. — John Sandford

When you're building a character, or at least when I'm building a character, you start saying, 'How am I going to make people like him?' — John Sandford

Oh yeah, I heard you got born again.' she said. 'Which you needed since they fucked up the first time. — John Sandford

trust no one, everything breaks, nothing works as advertised, and if anything can go wrong, it will. — John Sandford

The advanced interstellar culture operates on a barter system. Never saw that one coming. — John Sandford

Like the NRA says, it's better to have a machine gun and not need it than to need a machine gun and not have it. — John Sandford

A diplomatic passport for a Tal Zahavi, with a current photo of Yael-1. The same birth date as in the other passport. The interior must have had fifty entry stamps for European and South American countries, plus the U.S., Japan, and South Korea. The woman traveled a lot. — John Sandford

When any worthwhile thing is done in the world, it's usually done by somebody weird. — John Sandford

These characters are not spontaneous creations. They are engineered down to the last nut and bolt. — John Sandford

It's the way of the world, man. There are the worker bees, and the manager bees. The worker bees take care of the work, the manager bees take care of themselves. — John Sandford

Lot of Irish in Mexico. The Mexican name, Obregon? It comes from O'Brien. — John Sandford

Clay pulled Lucas along and as they were approaching the back door, he called, "Madam Secretary . . . I need you to meet this guy." She stopped and turned and looked at Lucas and then Clay, did a quick price check on Lucas's suit, and asked, "How do you do? — John Sandford

Coyotes don't eat dachshunds," Johnson said. "Dachshunds were bred to go down badger tunnels and drag the badgers out by their ass. A good-sized dachshund could weigh thirty pounds and has jaws like a crocodile. Old Dixie would straight-out fuck up a coyote." "Didn't know that," Virgil said. - — John Sandford

They were shot with a shotgun and put in garbage bags and thrown under a bridge," Shrake said. "If it wasn't murder, it was a really weird accident. — John Sandford

The gun locked open and he slammed another magazine in. As he did it, he either saw or imagined he saw a ripple moving through the cornfield and fired four more shots at it, then stopped, crouched, and stepped sideways across the nose of the truck, saw Robertson facedown in the driveway gravel. He was alive, pushing up with his hands, getting nowhere. — John Sandford

Cops and schoolteachers," Sloan said with satisfaction. "A cop and schoolteacher bar. The teachers drink like fish. The cops hit on the schoolteachers. One big happy family. — John Sandford

Good," Lucas said. "And hey - relax. Gonna be all right." "No, it won't," she said. "I can almost guarantee that whatever it is, it won't be all right. — John Sandford

Lucas lifted his head to look around and saw that dozens of people were dead or wounded; and that cops were flowing in from everywhere, that fifteen civilians were filming the chaos with their iPhones, that two TV crews were already working it, and that people everywhere were screaming in pain . . . He and Bowden knelt next to Jubek and Jubek's eyes were open and he said, "Hurt," and Lucas could hear more clearly now and said, "Hang on," and Jubek almost laughed and said, "I'm trying, dumbshit. Get me something . . . — John Sandford

The day after the assignation with Barstad, the low stacked-heels of Charlotte Neumann, an ordained Episcopalian priest, author of New Art Modalities: Woman/Sin, Sin/Woman, S/in/ister, which, the week before, had broken through the top-10,000 barrier of the Barnes & Noble on-line bestseller list, and who was, not incidentally, the department chairperson, echoed down the hallway and stopped at his door. — John Sandford

What!" Schiffer blurted, not a question. Lucas had been watching Carver and Dannon again, and again, their eyes were blank; if they'd been lizards, Lucas thought, a nictitating membrane might have dropped slowly across them. — John Sandford

Rose Marie, wrapped in a wool shawl, was sitting on a lounge chair, smoking a cigarette; nicotine gum, she said, was for pussies. She was a short woman, going to weight, with an ever-changing hair color. — John Sandford

Impossible to know. The thing is, you take a fork in the road, it doesn't always work out for the better . . . but sometimes it does. It must. — John Sandford

LOUISE WAS SORTING nuts and bolts into metal bins at the back of the somnambulant hardware store. — John Sandford

As an individual with my own hurts, I go into the Garden (Gethsemane) as often as I need to. There I identify with the pain in the other, with my part in that pain, my part in tempting someone to wound me. I experience the other's pain, and God's pain, and am devastated - because their pain becomes my own. Feeling such anguish, I can forgive, or deeply repent, either for myself or on behalf of the other. — John Sandford

It's okay with us," Dannon said, and now there was something in his eye, a little spark of pleasure, a job well done. Lucas thought, This isn't good. — John Sandford

The press conference was held in a courtroom at the new county courthouse, a space that did its best to translate justice into laminated wood. — John Sandford