Robert B. Parker Quotes & Sayings

The young man void of understanding may be depended upon to fall into the ditch of debauchery without much pushing, and — Robert B. Parker

It was 10:45. Across the continent Susan would be putting on her makeup now, and spraying some perfume on herself and making sure her hair was perfect. I looked at my reflection in the window. My hair wasn't perfect. Neither was I. — Robert B. Parker

The urban renewers had struck again. They'd evicted me, a fortune-teller, and a bookie from the corner of Mass. Ave. and Boylston, moved in with sandblasters and bleached oak and plant hangers, and last I looked appeared to be turning the place into a Marin County whorehouse. — Robert B. Parker

Money makes the world go round, darlin'. And sex makes the trip worthwhile. Sex — Robert B. Parker

both practicing restraint. — Robert B. Parker

I had a Coors beer. I never cared for Adolph Coors's politics, but I wasn't sure I cared for anyone's, and he made a nice beer. No carcinogens. — Robert B. Parker

The women looked naked, in a way that women never do in skin magazines. These women were real, with the fine roughening of skin here and there, the tiny sag at the breast, the small folds across the stomach that real women, and men, have. It made them more, rather than less, seductive, I thought, because it emphasized their nakedness, and in a sense their vulnerability. It also made me feel a little sadder for them. That kind of vulnerability shouldn't be handed around. It was for someone who loved you and was vulnerable too. — Robert B. Parker

We split a bottle of Norman cider. Not everybody sells Norman cider by the bottle.
"Has a European feel" Susan said.
"That sounds terrific" I said. "Can I have one?"
Susan grinned at me. "How did you ever get to be so big without growing up?" she said.
"Iron self-control" I said. — Robert B. Parker

Who is he?" "Jiminy Cricket," I said. "He hangs around to make — Robert B. Parker

Professionally," Susan said, "I'm not at all sure that love, as such, is not simply a complex of human impulses: need, identification, possessiveness, fear of loneliness, impulse to replicate the family from which you sprang, sexual desire, anger, the desire to punish, the desire to be punished. — Robert B. Parker

people trying to look like Eurotrash were sitting outside having various kinds of fancy coffee and looking at each other. — Robert B. Parker

Pearl eyed a man and woman walking by in funny hats. Her whole body stiffened with the desire to bark at them. Mine too. But we had both been urged repeatedly not to, and we were — Robert B. Parker

Keep her origins a mystery. — Robert B. Parker

and tested room service. I left her at work Monday — Robert B. Parker

The ways of the Lord," I said, "are often dark, but never pleasant."
"Adler?"
"Theodor Reik, I think. — Robert B. Parker

Is he any good?" Susan said. "DeSpain. Yeah. He's a good cop. Very tough cop." "Too tough?" "Some people thought so," I said. "Tougher than you?" "Never a horse that couldn't be rode, little lady. Never a rider that couldn't be throwed." "Good heavens," Susan said. "Does that mean he might be?" "Means maybe we'll find out some day," I said. — Robert B. Parker

Tony's patois kept getting broader as we talked. Like Hawk, he seemed able to turn it on and off. "Sho 'nuff," he said. — Robert B. Parker

Please send me a bill for your services through" - he looked at his watch - "through today," he said. "And you'll pay it with a rubber check," I said. — Robert B. Parker

Halfway through my steak I caught sight of myself in the mirror behind the bar. I looked like someone who ought to eat alone. I didn't look in the mirror again. — Robert B. Parker

Both our opinions are rooted in our experience," I said. "Both of them are true, it's just that we've had different experiences. — Robert B. Parker

He was probably stud duck at the Rotary Club cookouts. I could have taken him while whistling the Michigan fight song and balancing a seal on my nose. — Robert B. Parker

You right," Hawk said. "Couldn't happen. Be like J. Edgar Hoover running around in a dress."
"Exactly," I said. "Impossible. — Robert B. Parker

I sat and looked up at the blue sky and across at the blank windows for a long time. A woman I'd once cared about had worked in anadvertising agency over there. Sometimes, when the sun came at them from a different angle, I could see through the windows across the street and watch her moving about her office. Agency was gone now. Maybe the whole building was gone, replaced by a new one. It was hard to remember. — Robert B. Parker

Probably the easiest and most efficient approach was to hate everybody. Where have you gone, Jackie Robinson? — Robert B. Parker

Since when do you and I talk about the world," she said. "The world is what it is."

"Yeah, I know."

"Not only do you know, you've helped me to know."

"Good to be useful," I said.

"What has always made me respect you, even in the
bad times, was your ability to look out at the world
and see what's there. Not what you'd like to see, or
even what you need to see, but simply what's there. — Robert B. Parker

Jeez, on those TV real-life cop shows they don't do this. They got all kinds of guys with microscopes and computers figuring shit out.' 'We're a small department,' Jesse said. 'We can't afford smart people.' 'This could be a total waste of time,' Simpson said. 'Ah,' Jesse said, 'you are beginning to understand the intricacies of police work. — Robert B. Parker

I have reached the point where I know that as long as I sit down to write, the ideas will come. What they will be, I don't know. — Robert B. Parker

You shoot, you always shoot to kill. It's not the movies. You're in a crisis situation, you got about a half second to do what needs to be done. Your — Robert B. Parker

I heard somebody define heaven once," she said, looking at Pearl, "as a place where, when you get there, all the dogs you ever loved run to greet you. — Robert B. Parker

He do that with me, too," Susan said. "It drives me fucking crazy." "Gee," I said, "I was liking it better when we were talking about Hawk's problems." Susan smiled. — Robert B. Parker

Walked out without a word. Fogarty nodded at Petrocelli, — Robert B. Parker

Susan laughed. I always loved the sound of her laughter. And to have caused it was worth the west side of heaven. — Robert B. Parker

You know that you can't predict and you can't expect that you should have predicted. You do the best you can, as decently as you can, and you accept the consequences. — Robert B. Parker

I finished my New Amsterdam Black & Tan. I wanted another one, but I was used to that. I always wanted another one. — Robert B. Parker

Sure, I have advice for people starting to write. Don't. I don't need the competition. — Robert B. Parker

What is it," Pam Shepard said, "about a cluster of skyscrapers in the distance that makes you feel ... What? ... Romantic? Melancholy? Excited? Excited probably."
"Promise," I said.
"Of what?"
"Of everything," I said. "From a distance they promise everything, whatever you're after. They look clean and permanent against the sky like that. Up close you notice dog litter around the foundations."
"Are you saying it's not real? The look of skyscapers from a distance."
"No. It's real enough, I think. But so is the dog litter and if you spend all your time looking at the spires you're going to step in it."
"Into each life some shit must fall?"
"Ah," I said, "you put it so much more gracefully than I. — Robert B. Parker

Teaching is too strong a word for whatever it was I did at Northeastern University. — Robert B. Parker

Thank you sir," she said. "I hope that your friend feels better soon."
I shrugged. "The ways of the Lord" I said, "are often dark, but never pleasant. — Robert B. Parker

There is a knife blade in the grass," I said. "And a tiger lies just outside the fire." "My God, Spenser, that's bathetic. Either tell me about what hurts or don't. But for crissake, don't sit here and quote bad verse at me." "Oh damn," I said. "I was just going to swing into Hamlet." "You do and I'll call the cops." "Okay," I said. "You're right. But bathetic? That's hard, Suze. — Robert B. Parker

Whatever you did, and whoever you killed, and however you feel about it, you have to judge all of that in context. You were doing what you felt you had to do, and you were doing it for love."
"The people I killed are just as dead."
"Yes. It makes no difference to them why you did it. But it makes a difference to me and to you. What we've been through in the last couple of years has produced the relationship we have now, achieved love, maybe. Something we've earned, something we've paid for in effort and pain and maybe mistakes as well. I live with some."
"I know," I said.
"We aren't who we were," she said. — Robert B. Parker

Can you analyze our relationship in the light of Silvermanian pragmatism?" I said.

"I love you because I find it compelling to be loved so entirely. You love me
because as long as you do you can believe in romantic love. — Robert B. Parker

There stirred behind her face a sense of life and purpose and mirth and caring that made her seem to be in motion even as she was still. There was a kind of rhythm to her, even in motionless repose. I said, "Energy contained by grace, maybe. — Robert B. Parker

Pearl the Wonder Dog was asleep on her back, in the armchair next to the fireplace, with her feet sticking up in the air. — Robert B. Parker

I put my arms around her and closed my eyes and put my cheek against the top of her head and stood for a long time without speaking while my soul melted into her. I knew we weren't the same person. I knew that it was good that we weren't. I knew separateness made love possible. But there were moments, like this one, of crystalline stillness, when it felt as if we really could merge like two oceans at the bottom of the world. — Robert B. Parker

I wonder why I'm so uneasy naked," she said. "Maybe it's the gimlet-eyed lechery of my gaze," I said. "Probably," she said. — Robert B. Parker

It was that juxtaposition of how it used to be with how it had turned out that made L.A. so interesting and so sad a place, I thought. — Robert B. Parker

I had my arm around her shoulder. She had her head against my neck. "Postcoital languor," she said, "is almost as good as inducing it. — Robert B. Parker

When we settled in to eat, Susan said, "So, tell me about it." "You shrinks are always so cocksure," I said. "Nice word choice," Susan said. "In the current context. — Robert B. Parker

This is not a screenplay. I don't do twenty drafts. I'm not going to show this to you until it's published or accepted for publication. You can make whatever suggestions you want, but I probably will ignore them entirely. — Robert B. Parker

Hawk could track a salmon to its spawning bed without getting wet. But — Robert B. Parker

seem an honest man, sir," she said. " 'Let be be the end of seem,' " I said. She smiled faintly. " 'The only emperor,' " she said, " 'is the emperor of ice-cream.' " "Very good, — Robert B. Parker

Called Evan Malone at the number Epstein had given me and got his wife, and made an appointment to come up to his place on Bow Lake to talk with him. On the drive up Route 93, I called Epstein on the cell phone. — Robert B. Parker

With so much at stake maybe I'll just leave now. — Robert B. Parker

Writer's block? I've never heard of a plumber complain about plumber's block. — Robert B. Parker

I watched the kids walking past us on the sidewalk. They looked pretty much like any other kids. They were dressed for each other. Oversized clothes, sneakers, hats on backwards, or sideways. Most of them tried to look confident. Most of them were full of pretense. All of them were a little overmatched by the speed at which the world came at them. But these kids weren't like other kids, and I knew it. These kids were doomed. And they knew it. — Robert B. Parker

Afterlife is no less implausible than anything else,' I said. 'All explanations of existence are equally incredible.' 'So you might as well believe something that makes you feel good as not, — Robert B. Parker

You and Galileo," I said.
"Didn't he throw his balls off the leaning tower?" Quirk Said. — Robert B. Parker

It was not just that Ross Macdonald taught us how to write; he did something much more, he taught us how to read, and how to think about life, and maybe, in some small, but mattering way, how to live. — Robert B. Parker

Back down to the ghetto again," I said. "Good for you," Hawk said. "Give you a chance to be a minority." "I like you," I said. "I am a minority. — Robert B. Parker

'All Our Yesterdays' was unquestionably the best work I have ever done. And the reading public stayed away in droves. — Robert B. Parker

Colt makes a heavy firearm." - Virgil Cole — Robert B. Parker

I think finally good writing gets out there, and people like it, and bad writing doesn't. Well, no. Bad writing does get out there 'cause some people like it. — Robert B. Parker

She found me intolerable. But she got to know me, and I wore her down. — Robert B. Parker

I write five pages a day. If you would read five pages a day, we'd stay right even. — Robert B. Parker

See, being a person is kind of random and arbitrary business. You may have noticed that. And you need to believe in something to keep it from being too random and arbitrary to handle. Some people take religion, or success, or patriotism, or family, but for a lot of guys those things don't work. A guy like me. I don't have religion or family that sort of thing. So you accept some system of order, and you stick to it. — Robert B. Parker

Somebody's helping you and you have to take time off to listen to them and pretend you think their ideas are great and come up with an answer that makes them feel good, — Robert B. Parker

Asking your husband to go one-on-one with Joe Broz is like putting a guppy in the piranha pool. If we don't find him before Broz does, he'll be eaten alive. — Robert B. Parker

Not smoking gains in the area of lung cancer, but it loses badly in the realm of dramatic gestures. — Robert B. Parker

Fourteen years in the professor dodge has taught me that one can argue ingeniously on behalf of any theory, applied to any piece of literature. This is rarely harmful, because normally no-one reads such essays. — Robert B. Parker

We're fifteen," he said. "And we found each other already? Is that possible? Can you find somebody at fifteen? — Robert B. Parker

Vinnie and Hawk lounged in the theater lobby, blending in to the theatrical scene like two coyotes at a poultry festival. — Robert B. Parker

Susan had decided to sit by the pool at the hotel with a copy of a book by Alice Miller called The Drama of the Gifted Child. — Robert B. Parker

It's just that myth about your equipment," I said. "Ain't no myth, man. — Robert B. Parker

But like they say at the Pentagon, you have to plan for the enemy's capacity, not his intentions. — Robert B. Parker

Punctuality was not Susan's strength. She always intended to be on time, but she seemed to have some kind of chronometric dyslexia, which thwarted her intent, nearly always. — Robert B. Parker

Susan came into the living room with her cowboy boots on and no other clothes. "Howdy," I said. — Robert B. Parker

Loss is the price we pay for progress," she said. "Only as we leave things behind do we move forward. — Robert B. Parker

How about the wrong crowd," I said. "You getting in with them?"
"Not much luck," Paul said. "I'm trying like hell, but the wrong crowd doesn't seem to want me."
"Don't quit," I said. "You want something, you go after it. I was nearly thirty-five before I could get in with wrong crowd. — Robert B. Parker

Candy nodded absently.
"Okay," she said. "What shall I wear?"
"A gun," I said. — Robert B. Parker

I always loved it when I had a story to tell her, because her attention was complete and felt like sunlight. — Robert B. Parker

Mary Lou Buckman and I sat in the first booth, and I, mindful of Wild Bill Hickok, sat facing the door. — Robert B. Parker

I could feel the tension radiate from my solar plexus and jangle along the nerve circuitry. It had nothing to do with the weather. — Robert B. Parker

Too much positive is either scared or stupid or both. Reality is uncertain. — Robert B. Parker

I do the best I can to approve and disapprove only of my own behavior. I don't always succeed, but I try. I'm trying now and I'm going to keep at it. — Robert B. Parker

Would you care to publish this? Sincerely, Robert B. Parker. — Robert B. Parker

One of the things that made Susan so interesting was the fact that she looked like a Jewish princess and worked like a Bulgarian peasant. — Robert B. Parker

Words can," Susan said. "And tone of voice. You're just so goddamned autonomous that you won't explain yourself to anybody. — Robert B. Parker

her hair. But fantasy — Robert B. Parker

from Arlington Street and onto the bridge. He had his hands in his coat pockets. "You Spenser?" he said. "Yes. — Robert B. Parker

I try to be honorable. I know that's embarrassing to hear. It's embarrassing to say. But I believe most of the nonsense that Thoreau was preaching. And I have spent a long time working on getting myself to where I could do it. Where I could live life largely on my own terms. — Robert B. Parker

If you want to write, write it. That's the first rule. And send it in, and send it in to someone who can publish it or get it published. Don't send it to me. Don't show it to your spouse, or your significant other, or your parents, or somebody. They're not going to publish it. — Robert B. Parker

They are more inclined to think you're innocent if you sound like Barbara Walters," Rita said.
"You think Barbara would be a good date?"
"Oh, oink," Rita said. — Robert B. Parker

Susan told me on the way out," Hawk said, "how you been spreading your charm around town and now they ready to lynch your ass."
"Charm can only carry you so far," I said. — Robert B. Parker

Hawk looked at Tony without speaking. He had three gunshot wounds and still could barely stand, but — Robert B. Parker

Her breasts were good, her thighs were terrific. When she shook hands with me, I felt something click down back of my solar plexus. — Robert B. Parker

Businessmen learn the way businessmen are supposed to be. Professors learn the way professors are supposed to be. Construction workers learn how construction workers are supposed to be. They spend their lives trying to be what they're supposed to be and being scared they aren't. Quiet desperation. — Robert B. Parker

Mostly I thought about Susan with her clothes off. This would solve nearly any problem I had, — Robert B. Parker

You have any suggestions, make them. I'm in charge but humble. No need to salute when you see me."
Fraser said, "Mind if we snicker every once in a while behind your back?"
"Hell, no," I said. "Everyone else does. — Robert B. Parker

To be looked at by Susan, naked, with those eyes, over a glass of pink champagne, was all I knew on earth, and all I had to know. — Robert B. Parker

We had our own sort of divorce back a while," I said.
"Yes."
"I was pretty crazy, I think."
"Yes," Susan said.
"You were pretty crazy," I said.
"Yes," she said. "I was."
"And we leapt tall buildings at a single bound."
"We were probably leaping the wrong ones," Susan said, "in those days."
"Maybe," I said. "But maybe those days helped us to leap the right ones now, and more gracefully. — Robert B. Parker