Don Winslow Quotes

We are all cripples, Keller thinks, limping together through this crippled world. It's what we owe to each other.

I would prefer things to be peaceful and not have conflict.

Your strengths are your weaknesses.

The more you try to protect something, the more vulnerable you make it.

Hell isn't having no choice.
It's having to make a choice between horrific things.

They say that love conquers all. They're wrong, Keller thinks. Hate conquers all. It even conquers hate.

Mateo runs up and Pablo hugs him. It's amazing, he thinks, that he never gets tired of that sensation.

Their only weapon is shame, if the powerful can even feel it.

I think you can use fiction to get inside people's minds.

you do not avenge a murder by killing - you avenge it by living.

Together, Ben and Chon make up a collective pacifist. Ben is the paci Chon is the fist.

Why do women love to talk about love?" Giorgio asks. "Why don't men, is more the question," Ana says.

The novelist is the vestigial bone on the body cinema. We're like the little toe that can be cut off.

Perhaps we're not the greater good, but we are the lesser of evils.

Now he seeks truth in silence. He seeks God in the same, although he has come to believe that truth and God are the same. Truth, stillness, and God.

Americans take their strength in victories, Mexicans' strength is in their ability to suffer loss.

Deliver my soul from the sword; my love from the power of the dog. Psalms 22:20

The bridge to Coronado Island off San Diego was built because the mob had a hotel there and needed a way to get people out there.

I get started at 5:30 in the morning and write till 10 A.M. Then I hike six or seven miles before going back to work.

We go off the meds and elect Richard Nixon, the Nurse Ratched of the American political psych ward.

They got the absolute freedom to choose what we want them to.

...'would have' is just another way of saying 'didn't.

The past isn't in the past. It's always with us. In our history. Our minds, our blood.

The bozo who's going to go early John Woo all over the manicured lawns and flower beds just to show he doesn't give a fuck about convention.

Producing words isn't a problem for me. And I usually write two books at a time. When one horse gets winded, you jump on the other.

My problem is not that there are too few ideas out there. It's that there are too many.

Nasty Ass got his street name because he always smells like he has a round in the chamber. If

Smart people sometimes get stupid, but stupid people never get smart.

Grande is Mexico's harshest and most secure prison, and

Well, if you're writing a thriller, you have to have your character in mortal jeopardy on page 1 or it's not a thriller.

guy trips over the age thirty wire, he realizes that certain things he wanted in his life just aren't going to happen.

the old "4-4-40" rough standard for human survival: four minutes without air, four days without water, forty days without food.

Luis hopes for heaven.
Keller fears hell.
Vera fears only death, and that because he takes such pleasure in life.

At least Barrera didn't stick the envelope into her panties.

I don't recognize myself. I don't know who I am anymore. And it's all fun and games until someone loses an I.

Satan can only tempt you with what you already have.

Life, he muses, always gives you an excuse to take what you want anyway.

Mexico is a cemetery for secrets.

There is no water to put out the fire. Mi canto la esperanza. - Carlos Santana "Maria Maria

If you let people believe that you are weak, sooner or later you're going to have to kill them.

I have to remind the people who put down East Coast surfing that Kelly Slater is from Florida.

Art can't decide whether the War on Drugs is an obscene absurdity or an absurd obscenity. In either case, it's a tragic, bloody farce.

Shit," Pablo says.

You can either love," Pablo says, "or you can talk about it. You can't do both.

As a surfer, I think of places like a wave: you see one thing on the surface. But you always know there's something different going on underneath.

I start work at 5 in the morning and I have a wicked insomnia problem.

And the most dangerous place on earth - Is where you're safe.

Beware the hospitality of the sociopath.

What's the problem?" Fuck it, Art thought. Too late now. So he answered, "That we look at 'these people' like 'targets.

Maybe, Keller thinks, I've become too used to solitude. Maybe I like it too much.

This violent state of mind.
This violent state of mine.

Also: do not fuck with someone until you know exactly who the fuck you're fucking with.
And then don't do it.

You know, I mean this sincerely, you know, I'm so grateful that I get to get up in the morning and do this, you know, and write books.

So I thought I should write five pages a day. And that's what I did. Eventually I had a book.

The people, they don't know what it takes sometimes to keep them safe and it's better that they don't.

When the devil comes, he comes on angel's wings.

Giorgio cannot leave a bottle undrunk or an attractive woman unfucked, and those activities tend to get in the way of revolution.

he's not sure how safe this meeting is going to be. And

This is not a war on drugs. This is a war on the poor. This is a war on the poor and the powerless, the voiceless and the invisible,

A great review is great. A bad review is the worst.

Keller has long believed that you have to be lucky to be good, but not good to be lucky.

The lost, the lonely, the bicultural misfits with a foot in two worlds and a place in neither.

There are various kinds of savagery: emotional, spiritual, economic, and cultural savagery.

I was a safari guide in the 1980s in Kenya.

Even a North American defense lawyer is right sometimes," Aguilar says. "Like a broken clock, twice a day.

You're a big boy," Ana observes, staring blankly into her cup. "You could have said no." "I stand with Oscar Wilde on the subject of temptation.

Maybe money can't buy happiness, but it can rent it for a long time.

The Mexicans have finally found a drug that white trash likes and can afford. And one thing you ain't never gonna run out of is white trash.

That's all right, Neal thought. Every one of us is at least two people.

She's also ruthless - it's love me or off with your head. She's the Red Queen

A lot of existential questions will be answered just after the "Fuck." As in life itself.

We always think of borders as something that separates two peoples but of course they unite them. It's something you have in common, literally.