Robert B. Parker Quotes

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

I took a sip. It went surprisingly well with the veal. On the other hand, the fourth margarita goes surprisingly well with everything.

She rearranged her legs again. If she kept doing that, it was possible that I might begin to bugle like a stallion. Which would not be dignified.

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

There can never be any substitute for your own palate nor any better education than tasting the wine yourself.

Check the parking lots, too, for the car.

Colombians have been dealing with cocaine since your ancestors were running around Ireland with their bodies painted blue," Kingsley

I was struggling happily with my ribs. Normally I ended up with barbecue sauce in my socks when I ate ribs, but I always figured they were worth it.

Money makes the world go round, darlin'. And sex makes the trip worthwhile. Sex

I read someplace that wanting to know everything about a person is wanting to possess them." "I believe that is probably true," Susan said.

The point is not to get hung up on being what you're supposed to be. If you can, it's good to do what pleases you.

Then why don't you get married?" "I'm not sure. Mostly it's a question of how we'd affect each other, I suppose. Would

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

In the bank they did the same kind of stuff the fortune-teller and the bookie had done. But they dressed better.

None of us offered to shake hands. There was no advantage to letting somebody get hold of you.

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

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

Freedom of the press is a flaming sword.
Use it wisely, hold it high, guard it well.

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

The sedan went too and I stood alone in the woods and watched my ear burn.

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

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.

Dewar's and water," I said. "Yes. I don't care really, but everyone at work says if you don't order by name they give you bar whiskey.

To kill a man you need three things: the gun and the balls?" "We can get the gun okay,

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

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

There were worse things than being in love with two women. Better than being in love with none.

Susan always claimed that when I ate a sub I looked like I'd fought with it.

I didn't have to say it. I just had to write it. It was painful enough.

I was doing curls. Hawk said, "How you and Susan doing?" "Love is lovelier," I said, "the second time around." "Worth the scramble," Hawk said.

I was in my office tilted back in my chair with my feet up drinking a cup of coffee and eating my second corn muffin

She's a sicko, Hawk." "Ah ain't planning to screw her psyche, babe.

Christmas dinner? At Susan's?" I nodded. "We could call it a Kwanzaa dinner, if that would improve your mood.

I think at this stage in my life I have learned that there are any number of things that men will never know, and can never hope to know, about women.

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

Mary sat, quiet and attentive and blank. It wasn't like talking to a dumb seventh-grader, it was like talking to a pancake.

She was wearing something in purple suede that was too short for a skirt and too long for a belt.

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.

it's better to be what I am than to be failing at what I am not.

Joan organizes our social life, and on weekends I follow her around.

her hair. But fantasy

No olive?" I said. "Only a fucking beast would have an olive in his martini,

Walked out without a word. Fogarty nodded at Petrocelli,

With so much at stake maybe I'll just leave now.

I headed straight into the setting sun, and rode west at an easy pace. It was going to be a long ride, and there was no reason to hurry.

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

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

and gestured. A number of students were taking notes, some

drank more scotch. "Probably he wasn't alone," I said. "Probably not," Hawk murmured. "So," I said. "How you want to handle this?

Writer's block? I've never heard of a plumber complain about plumber's block.

For David Parker and Daniel Parker, with the respect and admiration of their father, who grew up with them.

If you are going to live life on your own terms, there need to be terms, and somehow you need to live up to them.

Perhaps the one absolute essential to growing up well is being tough enough," Susan said. "Like us," I said.

Susan came down the hall in a white dress that fit her well. She looked like she was receiving an Academy Award for stunningness. I

Anger doesn't have to be expressed. It is enough to know that you're angry, and know why, and not lie to yourself about it.

When in doubt do something; and hope that if you keep doing it you'll come to understand what it is.

To imply something," Jesse said, "you have to know something. I'm just trying to learn.

And rich older husbands," I said. "And perhaps some evidence of promiscuity," Susan said. "I mean, every young wife doesn't cheat on her husband. Why

Life is mostly metaphor.

The medieval courtly love tradition holds that love is impossible in marriage because it is coerced, I said.

Of course not," Samuelson said. "Del Rio's got a place in Bel

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.

tape on and the car trembled with percussion all the way to Saugus, where Hawk pulled into a Martignetti's off Route 1 and bought three

I'm sleeping with a Harvard grad," I said.
"The Emory of the North," Becker said.

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

There is excitement in a new kiss, but there is a quality of memory and intimacy in kissing someone you've kissed often before. I

Hawk and I lay behind the rock

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.

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.

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

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.

Too much positive is either scared or stupid or both. Reality is uncertain.

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

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.

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

Quirk was still staring out the window. "I'm trying to keep hold of this thing," he said. "The guy isn't going to stop and

Rita didn't mind. I knew she wouldn't. Hawk fascinated her. Among other things he was male, which gave him a running start

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.

Hawk drifted around behind me in $5000 worth of clothes earning his $150 a day. We saw nothing interesting. We

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

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

But if I were a man," she said, "I imagine you wouldn't let me say it." "No," I said. "If I didn't need your help, I wouldn't let you say it.

Maybe they were all either pimps or whores. Maybe it was life's classifying principle, maybe I had seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker.

Because I love you," I said. "Because you are in my life like the music at the edge of silence.

Yeah. Floyd is his batman.

We'll let the B and E slide," Quirk said. "But corpses keep showing up in your area, we might cite you for littering.

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

I peeked under the covers. Susan was naked except for a pair of thick white athletic socks. This was another good sign. Susan

off with Utley." We were all quiet then, Susan and I

The speaker was the size of a tall

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

Just like human life. You want something so bad you make it hard to get.

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

I really don't know what I am going to do in terms of what a book is going to be about until I actually start writing it!

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

Being tough means looking straight at something ugly, and saying, "That's ugly; I'll have to find a way to deal with it." And doing so.

Jesus Christ," she said. "You are just like him, a master of the fucking oblique answer.

My older son who is, I think, here tonight, is forty-one years old. Which is odd because so am I.

And so forth and so on.

Luck is the residue of design," I said.