Marcus Sakey Quotes & Sayings

He never realized how noisy American silence was until all the gadgets died. — Marcus Sakey

Averaging the bids to arrive at a final price, the Leon — Marcus Sakey

I didn't want to just write a series - I wanted to write an epic, on story that spans three books, where decisions made in the first impact the last. — Marcus Sakey

Trying to analyze a situation without enough data was like looking at a photograph of a ball in flight and trying to gauge its direction. Is it going up, down, sideways? Is it about to collide with a baseball bat? Is it moving at all, or is something on the blind side holding it in place? A single frame didn't mean a thing. Patterns were based on data. With enough datapoints, you could predict just about anything. — Marcus Sakey

A little." She set it on the counter. "But it's probably not a terrible idea. Just in case. — Marcus Sakey

You want to change the world? Forget politics. Learn to code. — Marcus Sakey

The glass wall behind must have blown out as well, four stories of lethal shards surfing the roar of air and fire. — Marcus Sakey

Hollywood is a deeply odd place. There are so many factors that have to go perfectly, so many schedules and visions that have to snap together for a film even to be made, much less be good. — Marcus Sakey

It's like tossing a dart," he'd said. "There's nothing amazing about it. You throw and it sticks somewhere. But if you try and backtrack every factor that led there, the force of the throw and the angle and the air resistance, all of it had to be perfect, just exactly right, for it to end up where it did. — Marcus Sakey

Let us never yield to those who believe political power flows from the barrel of a gun, to — Marcus Sakey

A city of unarmed dreamers huddling beneath angry skies. — Marcus Sakey

He had been someone before. That person had been the result of a lifetime of choices, good and bad. And like it or not, he was drawing closer to that identity now. Not the freedom of infinite variety, but the tyranny of a decision made, a path walked, a life lived. What if he didn't like the view — Marcus Sakey

The world would be a better place if people stopped voting for folksy candidates they could have a beer with and started voting for people smarter than they are. — Marcus Sakey

They were innocent people. They could just do things you couldn't imagine. I can see code, do you get it? Algorithms that confound straights are just patterns to me. They come in my dreams. I dream the most beautiful programs never written. — Marcus Sakey

Everything copacetic? — Marcus Sakey

fluorescent bulbs were the result of a multimillion-dollar program specially engineered to offer the most hopeless light possible. — Marcus Sakey

Around here, I'm pretty sure 'us' means Texans, and 'them' means the other seven billion on the planet. — Marcus Sakey

The nature of compromise was that no one was happy. That's how you knew a fair deal had been reached. — Marcus Sakey

Life is a raindrop — Marcus Sakey

Funny, there had been a time when building things was what America did. From massive dams to towering skyscrapers, from mechanized factories to moon rockets, the nation had created, had viewed that as part of the national identity. — Marcus Sakey

People don't want the truth, not really. They want safe lives and nice electronics and full fridges. — Marcus Sakey

Cold liquid splashing across his face brought Kevin Temple back to himself. He'd been on the road all night, a dedicated run from Indiana hauling a load of fresh vegetables. Fifteen minutes out of the depot in Cleveland, and he had that stale feel, too much coffee washing down too much beef jerky. What he'd really been craving was a double cheeseburger, but while it would surprise no one to see a trucker gone flabby around — Marcus Sakey

No matter how long you spend at creation, you're always a student. — Marcus Sakey

Because artists are more dangerous than murderers. The most prolific serial killer might have dozens of victims, but poets can lay low entire generations. — Marcus Sakey

Dictators ride to and fro upon tigers which they dare not dismount. And the tigers are getting hungry. — Marcus Sakey

To pen a new history, one written in fire. And — Marcus Sakey

So, Abe's blood was spattered all over the walls of his office." Quinn traced a hand down the doorframe and looked at him meaningfully. "You might want to consider whether you really want the same people to come looking for you." He smiled without warmth as he made a business card appear. "Call me when you get it through your head that you're in danger. — Marcus Sakey

Our daughter is not going to an academy." I MISS MY SON, her sign had read. "Period. I don't care if she's tier one. I don't care if she's the first tier zero in history and can manipulate space-time while shooting lasers from her belly button. She is not going to an academy. — Marcus Sakey

Stephen King is open about the fact that he continues to learn the craft, and if King hasn't got it figured out yet, what the hell hope have the rest of us got? — Marcus Sakey

Revolution? You're an idiot. You don't even know what that word means. Forget your precious Mao and Che and Fidel. If they've appeared on a T-shirt, they haven't changed shit. You want revolution, look at Alexander Fleming. Penicillin transformed the world in ways Lenin and Washington only dreamt of. Now sit down and shut up, you autocratic frat boy. It's adult swim. — Marcus Sakey

The truth was, everything in life came down to intentions and results. Cooper's intentions in killing Peters and releasing the video had been good; the results had been a disaster. Did that make his intentions wrong? If so, that meant morality was really only a way of talking about how we wished things were. Hope, empathy, idealism - maybe they didn't matter. Maybe the only thing that counted was results. — Marcus Sakey

Just drop your jeans and gimme those genes. — Marcus Sakey

Data. That's what matters. That's what tells us something. But people want to see pictures. Supernova in vivid color. Even though scientifically it's useless. — Marcus Sakey

The world worked because people agreed to believe it worked. — Marcus Sakey

In every block of marble I see a statue as plain as though it stood before me, shaped and perfect in attitude and action. I have only to hew away the rough walls that imprison the lovely apparition to reveal it to the other eyes as mine see it. — Marcus Sakey

Cooper was halfway out of his chair with realizing he'd moved, his body on full combat alert. His mind spinning, — Marcus Sakey

Much of anything. But put a series together and patterns emerged. Some were obvious: haircuts, weight gained or lost, fashion trends. Others required — Marcus Sakey

Cooper pulled out a high-backed stool, sat down, tapped out the beat on the bar with his fingertips. He'd heard once that the essence of country music was three chords and the truth. Well, the three-chords part still stands. — Marcus Sakey

Freedom is not a couch. It's not a television, or a car, or a house. It's not an item you can possess. You cannot put freedom on layaway; you cannot refinance freedom. Freedom is something you need to fight for, not once, but every single day. The nature of freedom is that it is fluid; like water in a leaking bucket, the tendency is for it to drain away. Left untended, the holes through which freedom escapes widen. When politicians restrict our rights in order to "protect us," freedom is lost. When the military refuses to disclose basic facts, freedom is lost. Worst of all, when fear becomes a part of our lives, we willingly surrender freedom for a promise of safety, as if freedom weren't the very basis of safety. — Marcus Sakey

It was like meeting someone exceptional while you were married: the yank of possibility, the realization that here was another path your life could have taken. — Marcus Sakey

There was a rumor - a joke? Hard to tell at the DAR - that the fluorescent bulbs were the result of a multimillion-dollar program specially engineered to offer the most hopeless light possible. Cooper didn't know about that, but they did make everyone look two weeks dead. — Marcus Sakey

You are going to find that the heights you've attained make for a long fall if you don't understand the mountain. — Marcus Sakey

Frightened people want action more than they want correct action. It's in the data. — Marcus Sakey

Now she sat on a bench alongside Valerie West, the two of them pretending to be on their lunch. Val was a whiz with data analysis, but nervous in the field. Cooper was watching her shred her napkin, and weighing whether it was worth it to say something, when Luisa touched the other woman's knee, said something off-mic. Valerie nodded, shrugged her shoulders back, and tucked the napkin in her pocket. Good. Normally Cooper would have discouraged a romantic relationship between teammates, but the two often seemed better agents because of it. — Marcus Sakey

That's insane," said a goateed kid in front of Ethan. "You're locking down the whole city to catch a couple of terrorists? That doesn't make any sense. — Marcus Sakey

Even Christ hadn't been able to sell salvation to contented sinners. — Marcus Sakey

And you'll need a leader to do it. A man of bold vision, one who promises you a world where you're not only safe - you're in charge. Not equal rights. Superiority for the superior. — Marcus Sakey

NO TRESPASSING and SOLICITORS WARMLY GREETED WITH GUNFIRE signs, — Marcus Sakey

Cooper had a theory about personality. Most people considered personality to be a singular identity. Malleable, sure, but essentially cohesive. But he tended to see people as more of a chorus. Every stage in life added a voice to that chorus. The different iterations of himself - lonely military brat, cocky teenager, faithful soldier, young husband, dedicated father, relentless hunter - they all existed within him. — Marcus Sakey

The problem with looking for your glasses is that you don't have your glasses on while you're looking ... — Marcus Sakey

Back when they had been teenagers who thought love was a noun, a thing you could possess. — Marcus Sakey

I'm always geeking out about something. — Marcus Sakey

A bar like this anywhere else, there would be beer signs. You know, the old-school logos, the Clydesdales. And even the new beers, they make signs that consciously reflect the ones that came before. Because that's the way it's done. You brew a beer, you make a sign for it. It's like a pool table in a bar, even though no one really knows how to play pool anymore. Our grandparents shot pool; we get drunk and whack at the balls with warped sticks. No one thinks about it, but it's nostalgia. It's a sense of the past, of the way things are done. — Marcus Sakey

Among them Senator Blake Crouch (D-Colo.), who last year became the first gifted member of the US Senate. — Marcus Sakey

You don't know that. And now we never will." "We're agents of the United States government, not some Third World dictator's private security force. That is not the way we work. We don't have — Marcus Sakey

No matter how smoothly you tossed a stone into water, there were always ripples. Alongside — Marcus Sakey

But a sniper rifle was a matter of pure mechanics. Brace it, breathe properly, squeeze rather than pull the trigger, and it was just a projection of will across distance. — Marcus Sakey

Professional communications had always been about the attempt to generate memes, to make a message viral; abnorms just took that to a higher level. Back when he'd been a DAR agent, Cooper had read a brief arguing memetics was the most dangerous gift. As politicians had long known, people preferred short, catchy answers to complex ones, even if the short answers were oversimplified to the point of ridiculousness. Phrases like "old-world thinking" could be as devastating as a bomb, and much farther ranging. — Marcus Sakey

Cooper walked, slow and steady, four-four time in a world gone off measure. — Marcus Sakey

She'd always been blunt, to the point that people sometimes mistook her for cold. In truth, she was one of the warmest people he had ever met. — Marcus Sakey

Cooper had been at a scene once where a car had collided with an agent and pinned him against a metal barrier, shattering everything from the ribs down, severing both legs at midthigh. Massive physical damage, unsurvivable. What had haunted him most, though, was that the man was calm. He didn't scream, didn't seem to feel any pain. Some wounds were too enormous to feel. — Marcus Sakey

He'd chased Vasquez for nine days now. Someone had warned the programmer just before Cooper got to the Boston walk-up, a brick rectangle where the only light had been a window onto an airshaft and the glowing red eyes of power indicators on computers and routers and surge protectors. The desk chair had been against the far wall as if someone had leaped out of it, and steam still rose from an abandoned bowl of ramen. — Marcus Sakey

Once I came to really understand the mechanics of three-act structure, my life got a great deal easier. It doesn't tell you how to write your book, but it helps you understand why things aren't working, or what kind of beat needs to come next. — Marcus Sakey

But how do you teach a child to grasp that complexity? You teach them to grasp the style of thinking. There are no answers, only questions that shape your understanding, and which in turn reveal more questions. — Marcus Sakey

That was the lure of wealth, he'd discovered: a throaty whisper in your ear that you were special, that it was all - this wine, this woman, this world - for you. That it in some way existed only so that you might partake of it. — Marcus Sakey

Mom and Dad chatting around mouthfuls of steak while Junior used the scraps of his hamburger to buttress the walls of Fort French Fry. — Marcus Sakey

Personally, one of the most helpful things I learned was three-act structure. For my first four or so novels, I built the structure intuitively. — Marcus Sakey

No, the great thing about the truth is that it's true. — Marcus Sakey

It had been a surprise - and yeah, okay, a pleasure - to realize how very good he was at being bad. — Marcus Sakey

We are never more clever than in the creation of ways to destroy ourselves. — Marcus Sakey

The problem with the best moment in your life is that every other moment is worse — Marcus Sakey