The Nowhere Man Quotes
"A nonlethal blow that fractures the bridge of the nose, the sinus bones, and both orbital sockets, splitting the skull horizontally temple to temple. It leaves the upper jaw floating, unattached."
"He wasn’t just 'not in L.A.' He was nowhere near L.A."
"She’d been alive when he killed Contrell. She’d been alive when he went home and poured himself a glass of vodka and drank to a job well done."
"The inconvenience of this mystery detour made him angry. It was costing him time better spent tracking down Alison Siegler, who was currently trapped inside Container 78653-B812, as terrified as it was possible for a seventeen-year-old girl to be."
"Over the years Evan had killed a lot of people, disrupted innumerable operations, and left behind countless mourning relatives."
"If you have to ask for respect, you're not gonna get it."
"If you want a quality, act like you already have it."
"The two best words in the English language are 'Next time.'"
"Someone who thinks he's the smartest guy in the room rarely is."
"The hard part isn't killing. The hard part is staying human."
"How you do anything is how you do everything."
"It's amazing what people can convince themselves constitutes stress."
"The only American growth industry is entitlement."
"Most Americans seem to believe that safety assurances are awarded at birth like factory-issued warranties."
"The fantasy of what she was going to do to his body when she got ahold of him."
"From the front, a centerfold. From behind, Freddy Krueger."
"The transience of each instant also held its beauty."
"Luxury. You could take silk sheets and caviar and inject them directly into my veins."
"I want to have everything I want for as long as I want it."
"All ten thousand years of civilization had been built upon mankind’s desire to deny this fundamental truth."
"Even a few drops of its juice could shut down a person's kidneys."
"Crimea smelled like sewage, artillery shells, and boiled hot dogs."
"She felt like a Bentley being taken for a spin by the mechanic’s kid."
"God bless these Ukrainian-Russian broads. They oozed so much natural sexuality that they could slap the 1980s all over themselves and still knock the skin right off an American girl."
"When people think of human trafficking, they think of Thai virgins kidnapped from villages and shipped overseas. But sometimes it’s just drinking the wrong glass of champagne."
"I like my scars. They remind me of who I am."
"There are two kinds of people in the world. Those who make messes and those who clean them up."
"You’d be a quadriplegic. Maybe you could still speak. Or scream. But the break would cut off impulses from your brain to your diaphragm, and you’d eventually suffocate."
"We all get sad when someone dies. It reminds one of one’s mortality."
"If you control time, you control everything."
"It seemed more like someone’s idea of a library than an actual library."
"I like a challenge," he said. "But you’re testing my patience."
"Maybe you’re not good enough. Maybe we need to replace you. With your sister."
"No more walks for you. No more exercise. And no more time."
"I think you want to be a psychopath, René. But you’re not. I think what you are is lonely."
"I’ll get to you," he said. "I’m coming soon."
"You have your cuerno de chivo instead of the beanbag shotgun. I’m the item of value in this equation, not you."
"If you don’t exist, then it doesn’t matter, right?"
"The tangle of images knocked around inside him, sharp edges slicing beneath the skin, rising up his throat until he bellowed his rage at the ruined medical lab."
"Amid the remnants of the once-glorious operation, the safe rose, gleaming and intact."
"René’s chest heaved as he caught his breath."
"If Evan could get across the swell of land beside him, he’d be out of sight, his path to the summit clear."
"The power of the ages held in the span of his hand."
"Who would have thought that the fountain of youth was right there all along? A fountain inside our youth?"
"You are such a wonderfully pure thing. A self-made construct."
"Killers are only thieves of a different stripe."
"You’ll find that your humor is going to evaporate quickly."
"I know how to live with this. With what I saw."
"Evan stared at the circle of narcos penning him in and tried to convert his helplessness to rage."
"Despair was not a luxury in which he could indulge right now."
"I have reclaimed this atrocity for my own use."
"I hope to teach you what that feels like. Missing half of your body and being alive to know it."
"It’s like missing a limb—no, like missing half of my body."
"The power contained in his bearlike body was still evident."
"He could see the glow of René’s iPad in her deep brown eyes, how her face had crumbled at the sight held up before her."
"Everyone, it seems, but the contingent that Evan feared most."
"I’m not gonna waste time telling you what I’m gonna do to you," she said. "When the time comes, I’m just gonna show you."
"Because your encryption procedures worked out so well last time," Evan said.
"You see," Candy said, "we’re the only ones here with unlimited money."
"IT IS WHAT it IS, and THAT’S ALL that it IS."
"It is to be hijacked by what you aren’t rather than nourished by what you are."
"You think that gives you some kind of advantage?"
"You are the weapon. And your finger’s the safety."
"An instant before he could fire, the air exploded around him. He heard the meaty smack beneath his ear, felt a wrecking ball strike his shoulder, and then all he saw were pine needles and branches blurring by. The earth rushed up to greet him. Dirt in his mouth. Splinters in his cheek. Ice in his ear."
"He was alive. Of that he was mostly certain."
"His body was shocked into paralysis. But he could move his eyes. He strained them, trying to piece together what had happened."
"Candy and Orphan M were still a good ways downslope with plenty of steep terrain to make up. Since he held high ground, they’d have to move slowly, cautiously."
"Blood spread out beneath him, sticky on his neck. The warmth reached his cheek. If he didn’t stanch the bleeding—and fast—then this off-kilter view of the forest floor would be his final screen grab before he powered down."
"It occurred to him that he was going to die. And yet all he could see was the—paroxysm of pain racking Jack’s body."
""Goddamn it," Evan said. "Damn it. Damn it. Stupid fucking way to die."
"Since Jack he had let no one into his life, and so there would be no one to miss him."
"You deserve it, Evan told him, though the words didn’t make it out. You were better."
"I would have died for the truth instead of running from a lie. That’s what you did to me."
"Evan had sworn a promise to his twelve-year-old self: I’ll get to you. Here he was. But what did he want?"
"After all the blood and filth he’d waded through, he didn’t drink to numb his senses. He drank to try to cleanse himself from the inside out."
"This wall, the sole splash of green amid the metals and grays, was his one stab at living with life."
"Whatever Jack had hoped for him couldn’t be worth as much as the sight of Alison Siegler being tended to by paramedics."
"He considered how much of his life he’d spent bricking himself in."
"A sentry willing to go up against the Hector Contrells and René Cassaroys, the Assim al-Hakeems and Tigran Sarkisians."
"Which meant he could be someone. Someone real."
"The attempt struck him as poignant and pathetic at the same time."
"He was, he realized, barely holding it together."
"He’d long thought that it was a positive attribute, a testament to his durability, but now it felt artificial, unhuman."
"Exhaustion descended over him, a heavy cloud."
"He realized he was on his feet, pacing around the Vault."
"I don’t know how you did it, but count me impressed."
"He thought of Mia’s smile and wondered how dinner was going downstairs."
"For an instant he let himself imagine what it would be like to be free of it."
"She’d been through a lot, that poor girl. Show her some care. Handle her gently, like a lover."
"He couldn’t yet hang from the pull-up bar with his full weight, but if he tugged at it with his right hand, he could lengthen out the muscles of the arm."
"I live with it nonstop, pretty much. I think of it as a reminder of all the shit I’ve done."
"I’ll tell ya, more and more I feel like I been shot at and missed and shit at and hit."
"Evan clicked the ARES into his Kydex holster. "I know," he said."