The Matlock Paper Quotes
"When giants cast shadows, hope for the shade."
"The circumstances are different. This man isn't trained. He won't know who or where the enemy is. How could he? We don't know ourselves."
"Psychological profiles are only screening guidelines, hit-and-miss judgments."
"We've all agreed that our subject is motivated. The profile makes that clear."
"What must also be made clear is that any assistance given this committee by the subject is given freely and on a voluntary basis."
"New England, USA, is a goddamn microcosm. That's what's frightening."
"Bring in the SA specialists. CIA's crawling with them."
"We stay clean. We're strictly according to Interpol-Hoyle; no funny business."
"You worry about New England, USA. We'll handle the pampas, or whatever they are."
"A younger brother. Ten years younger, as a matter of fact. The parents are quite old. Very rich, very detached. This Matlock holds himself responsible."
"The brother. He killed himself three years ago with an overdose of heroin."
"There's no reason for you to be. Not about that."
"We want Nimrod. We want to know the location of that conference on May 10th."
"You're widely accepted by diverse, even conflicting factions within both the faculty and the student body. We have the names, you have the mobility."
"Somewhere out there is the information we need. Somewhere there's someone who has a paper like this; someone who knows what we have to know."
"Do you realize what you're asking him to do? He has no experience in this kind of work. He's not trained. Use one of your own men."
"If there's any truth to what he's said, he's placing you in the worst position a man can be in. An informer."
"Nothing could be written down; the briefing was slow, repetition constant. But Loring was a professional and knew the value of taking breaks from the pressures of trying to absorb too much too rapidly."
"Matlock, in turn—while memorizing the complicated information—was, on another level, reflecting on his own life, wondering in his own way why he'd been selected."
"The academic world had been a refuge, a sanctuary. Not an objective of long-standing ambition."
"He had tried to explain it to his wife, his lovely, quick, bright, ultimately hollow wife, who thought he'd lost his senses."
"But for him that world had lost its meaning."
"He was free. Free to enjoy the excitement of a meaningful challenge; free to revel in the confidence that he was equal to it."
"The depth of his own gratitude, the profoundness of his relief was such that he unconsciously promised himself never to discount the concerns of another human being."
"'Any surprises?' 'More a clarification, I'd say,' replied Matlock."
"He waited alone. The room was small, the window glass meshed with wire."
"He wasn’t sure why it bothered him, but it did. Perhaps, he thought, because he knew it was the beginning of a great many lies."
"It was worth it," said Ginny Beeson emphatically. "Isn’t it worth it, Jim?"
"Well trip. Not too much, old man. Limit's five. That's the house rules for new old friends."
"You're better friends than I thought you were."
"Just the beginning of a beautiful, beautiful friendship."
"You do not understand me. I want you to understand me. Please, understand."
"I could lose everything... No, I can tell! I am what I am, man!"
"Knowest thou not that when the searching eye of heaven is hid behind the globe and lights the lower world... then thieves and robbers range abroad unseen... in murders and in outrage bloody here."
"We're a couple of ciphers who got pushed around. We don't know what happened; just that we don't like it."
"A jungle Bar Mitzvah. It's a time for rejoicing. No caskets, no weeping shrouds."
"It's good to think in terms of tribes. Good for the brothers."
"Tribes in the bush don't always make war on each other, you know. They trade, share hunting and farming lands together, coexist in the main, probably better than nations or even political subdivisions."
"You don't object to that kind of endorsement, do you?"
"The collective, protective social group. Possessing an identity of its own."
"I used the word. It's good to think in terms of tribes. Good for the brothers."
"Adam says there's a certain majesty in the primitive. A very proud heritage."
"My home needs to be helped—and that's no game either, Pat. I think the risks are worth it."
"Thousands of starched young men had been initiated in this chapel-like enclosure, whispering the secret pledges, exchanging the unfamiliar handshakes explained to them by stern-faced older children, vowing till death to keep the selected faith. And afterward, getting drunk and vomiting in corners."
"I know that better than you do. My home needs to be helped—and that's no game either, Pat. I think the risks are worth it."
"I didn't feel there was an alternative. My younger brother..."
"You go back and tell them nothing. Nothing exists. It's all in their imaginations."
"Even Sealfont will have to agree. He can't fight it any longer."
"You might prevent other younger brothers, but you probably won't."
"That's my pathetic story. So you'd better continue."
"Truth is neither joyful nor sad, neither good nor bad. It is simply truth."
"No one needs a blind man. Not in this office."
"I may not know law but I know language. You're talking in contradictions!"
"You let it go, do you hear me? Do not touch it! Let it go!"
"When the old men kill themselves, the cities are dying."
"You're going to be fine," were the innocuous words he summoned.
"I fought... I fought and I fought... until I... couldn't remember any more."
"The girl does not know it. Not at this stage of her recovery. I understand the mind plays tricks. It rejects things until it thinks—or something tells it—that the remembering can be handled."
"I'm there but I'm not there, is that the idea? I'm consigned to the outer limits and that fulfills the bargain?"
"Frigga is the Norse goddess of the sky. She shares the heavens with Odin. Don't insult the lady, Houston."
"He was going to enter the world of Nimrod. The builder of Babylon and Nineveh, the hunter of wild animals, the killer of children and old men, the beater of women."
"I'm sorry, Mr. Matlock," muttered the gate man quietly. "No markers the first time around."
"Sure. Get the feel of the action. ... I tell you, it ain't Vegas. Between you and me, it's Mickey Mouse most of the time."
"You're a game one. Lotsa creeps would be screaming 'ice pickle' if they went for a bundle like you did."
"Don't you worry, I'll get it back. I always do."
"Tell you what. I'll call Sharpe over in Windsor Shoals. He's a Jew. Holy days don't mean a fucking thing to him."
"I may even drop over myself. The wife's got a Mothers of Madonna meeting, anyway."
"Only real problem coming into a territory is the time it takes to find the sources."
"In thirty-seven banks from here to Los Angeles."
"These kids, that's what I mean... You should hear their stories. Saigon, Da Nang. Hong Kong, even. Real peddling."
"The graduates of Indochina were not the pink-cheeked, earnest, young-old veterans of Armentières, Anzio, or even Panmunjom. They were something else, something faster, sadder, infinitely more knowing."
"Very rich, very cute. Some of them know about Jock-O's operation, most of them don't. You know what I mean?"
"By the time he gets out, he'll have a real nest egg. Start his business."
"I'm not a cop, I told you that. And you're not interested, remember? But I'm interested. I'm very interested, and you're going to tell me what I want to know."
"They make you do it.... You have to.... So many need help. They won't help anyone if you don't do it."
"I'm not interested in being a hero. I'm only interested in my friends. I don't have a flag decal in my car window and I don't like John Wayne. I think he's a shit. I think you all are. All shits."
"Look ye to the children; look and behold. They grow tall and strong and hunt the tiger with greater cunning and stronger sinews than you. They shall save the flocks better than you."
"Were the children hunting the tiger better? And even if they were, whose flocks would they save? And who was the tiger?"
"The questions burned into his mind. How many Jeannies were there? How extensive was Nimrod's recruiting?"
"If such was the case, Bagdhivi was wrong. The children had far less cunning, possessed weaker sinews; there was no reason to beware. Only to pity."
"What concerned him in an odd way was himself. If the hunted had instincts—protective in nature—the hunter had them also—aggressive by involvement."
"He had not been able to sleep, nor had he expected to. He had sent the girl away with money, for he had nothing else he could give her, neither hope nor courage."
"Ultimately, it was the children's own struggle. They wanted no help."
"Sometimes rules have to be broken; this is one of those times."
"Everything else was transient, hit or miss, unfamiliar and frightening."
"He tried so hard to think things through, look at all sides of every action, use the tools of his trained, academic imagination."
"It's mini-America: organized, computerized, and very heavy with the corporate structure."
"The practical men were giving him just enough time to accomplish something—if he could accomplish something."
"He had good reasons—a brother named David; a girl named Pat, a gentle old man named Lucas; a nice fellow named Loring; a confused, terrified student from Madison named Jeannie."
"The instincts of the hunted came swiftly to the surface, he knew the automobile behind him was no police car."
"For Lucas Herron, chairman for decades of Romance Languages, had an insatiable love for words and their odd usages."
"Nimrod has won! It's horrifying, but he's won!"
"He tried to think. Could he trust calling Washington, the Department of Justice, Narcotics Division?"
"He understood Greenberg's concern far better now. He had only to think of the Carlyle police—Nimrod's private army."
"And Major Lucas Herron had been carried off the tiny island of Peleliu in the Carolinas on a stretcher, having brought two companies back to the beach through jungle fire."
"Matlock closed the notebook. What had the girl named Jeannie said? They have the courts, the police, the doctors. And Alan Pace."
"I've kept a record over the years. He just stared at me speechless. I've never seen a man so frightened."
"His life is firmer than ever because of death."
"You're a good talker, but you're careless. You're also a ghoulish bastard."
"I don't know what you've been told, but it's not true. None of it's true."