Timothy Hallinan Quotes & Sayings

The enemy is not the badly written page; it is the empty page the great advantage of a badly written page is that it can be rewritten. It can be improved. A blank page is zero. In fact, it's worse than zero, because it represents territory you're afraid, unwilling, or too lazy to explore. Avoid exploring this territory long enough, and you'll abandon your book. — Timothy Hallinan

I heard what I'd learned against my will to identify as new age music. Aimless and spacey, it meandered from unresolved keyboard chord to unresolved keyboard chord with some somnolent noodling in place of melody. Drooling pianos, music to sleepwalk by. — Timothy Hallinan

And you know women, they're both back there turning it into the crime of the century. Planting it in a little garden in the center of their hearts and watering it with feelings. Talking about it, sharing it. You're a cheat, you're a heartbreaker, you're like a museum exhibit, Everything That's Wrong with Guys. — Timothy Hallinan

What was it like, being married to six actresses?"
"Like being married to one of them. They're all pretty much alike."
"Why'd you keep doing it, then?"
"Hope is the thing with feathers," Trent said, "that tickles your scrotum at the moments when you most need a clear head. — Timothy Hallinan

So you don't think the government is responsible for anything?" "Oh, it's responsible," Rafferty says. "It's responsible for the sloppiness and imprecision of the War on Terror, for example. It's responsible for taking people's tax dollars and spending the country into debt on useless wars and pointless pork projects to buy votes. It's responsible for bailing out the banks instead of standing up for the people the banks cheated. It's responsible for plenty, — Timothy Hallinan

Ain't never gone to be no asshole shortage. We got oil shortages, grain shortages, coal shortages, every kind of fuckin' shortage you can think of, but there ain't no asshole shortage. Assholism is a dominant trait. — Timothy Hallinan

She gave me the slow nod women use to indicate that they understand our pain, they admire the courage with which we handle it, and they're absolutely certain that it's all our fault. — Timothy Hallinan

Life is just there, to be made the best of, until it isn't. And that's all right, too. — Timothy Hallinan

The chuckle is a perfectly acceptable form of laughter. — Timothy Hallinan

Life is a gift. If we don't live it well, we are being ungrateful. And we have to love the ones who journey with us. (A Nail Through the Heart) — Timothy Hallinan