Blow Fly Quotes
"It can happen. At any given moment, we can get a call. It may prove to be the worst call of our careers, and here we are, slightly buzzed from a few drinks on our time off, or maybe sick, or in the middle of a fight with a lover, a friend, one of the kids."
"In this work, relationships can also become fatalities. Often they do."
"I’ve felt better," Scarpetta replies with a smile.
"I don’t see myself as different or hated. Maybe picked on a lot, but not back home."
"Everything comes with sacrifices. And it’s human nature to have a hard time accepting anyone who’s different."
"Maybe it’s a good thing you fell down—you were low to the ground when the lightning was flying all around."
"Decades of a well-meant pursuit of justice have been rewarded by banishment, by a forced acceptance of the nonexistence of himself and all he has ever known."
"His capacity for interpreting an honest remark as an insult wearies those who know him and terrifies those who don’t."
"He turns to his right as his keen peripheral vision catches the lumbering form of Pete Marino strolling in his direction."
""You ever go to the band shell here?" Marino asks, overcome by emotions he strangles in his throat with repeated coughs and loud sucks of smoke."
""I suppose I should ask you not to call me pal," Benton comments in a bland voice."
"Benton’s lean, handsome face does not register the volatile mix of thoughts and feelings inside his hidden places."
""Least you ain’t so far away you can’t hear the music, pal. Could be worse. That’s what I always say, could be worse.""
""I feel nothing about what people think of me," Benton says under his breath."
""Look what you’ve done to her!" he rails to the walls. "Look what you’ve done to her, you fucking son of a bitch!""
""It ain’t fucking fair," Marino hisses, his fists clenched by his sides."
""Be quiet," Benton quietly says with flinty self-control."
""I didn’t say you couldn’t smoke." Benton walks across the dim, shabby living room and hands Marino a Budweiser. "I said I minded.""
""We know damn well my being Tom isn’t just about me. If it was just about me, I would let them take their best shot.""
""For once, I’m blanking out on any possible explanation," he says."
""I can’t say anything right." Marino wipes sweat off his face."
""He victimizes to the end, dominates and controls another human being to the end, forces a person to commit an act that will scar forever.""
"All ills in life are blamed on acute stress, smoking and heavy drinking."
"People who stay for weeks or longer in their fishing camps on the bayous and rivers are expected to leave vehicles and boat trailers parked at the landing."
"Her office is piled with paperwork and stiff cardboard slide folders, so much of it stacked on the floor that she has to make an effort not to trip over her work."
"She puts on a fresh pair of white cotton examination gloves and picks up the letter and the scalpel, working the tip of the triangular blade into a top corner of the envelope."
"She has been sitting in the same position for so long—in the straight-backed wooden chair by her bedroom’s open door—that her lower back aches."
"If one ends up wherever he is staying, he gently coaxes it onto his finger and takes it outside, no matter how many flights of stairs, and deposits it on a bush."
"We often don’t know the reason for things, Benton. But I believe there is one, always."
"He argues about that with Scarpetta often, because he didn’t believe it at all back then. And she did."
"She contemplates whether she would shoot herself in the heart or the head if she were to lose everything that matters."
"We can’t make any more mistakes, Lucy. We just can’t."
"The fact is, at least two people in that hotel think you might be a drunk conventiongoer or maybe even a prostitute."
"You do feel it for me. At least sometimes, don’t you?"
"This went down bad, Rudy, really bad, but it’s going to turn out fine."
"No one would pay any attention to a vehicle in the parking lot, no matter the hour."
"Gator eyes remind Bev of periscopes fixing her in their sights before vanishing under water."
"Did you ask them their opinion? And if it’s the truth, then how come cottonmouths come crashing out of the trees, trying to get in the boat?"
"That’s news to me, not that I give a shit what people do, as long as I ain’t around to see it."
"I’m a suicide bomber with a New Jersey accent. Know how to fly planes, just can’t take off or land."
"We’d like at least twenty matching speech sounds for a positive match."
"The darkest areas on the known and questioned voiceprints correspond to the intensity of the frequencies."
"Nothing like justice to help them out at election time."
"Disloyalty, even born of weakness, is the unforgivable sin."
"You will be animated by the force and no longer distracted by pain and internal sensations."
"Her workouts are an addictive release from demons."
"All things happen for a reason, as you must know."
"I am quiet inside now," Jean-Baptiste says meekly.
"Two wrongs never make a right, Nic," he says.
"You know I did. When I came home that early evening and saw…"
"People who want credit will lie, cheat and steal," her father reminds her.
"I have always been able to write in a beautiful hand."
"You got money?" Jean-Baptiste quietly replies.
"Good man. You got rid of the truck," Lucy commends him without saying hello.
"Hey. I’m not stupid. Even if this is a piece of shit."
"The regular airport, long-term parking. Hope nobody breaks in to it. Everything I own’s in there. Even if it ain’t much."
"Where’s your boyfriend?" Marino asks as they walk toward the FBO.
"You don’t have to say nothing," he replies. "I already know."
"Fly fast," Marino says. "I hate helicopters, including yours."