Don Winslow

“In his mind’s eye, though, he sees——Talibanmoving like scorpions across a similar landscape his own caravan blown to shit blood streaming from buddiesNow I’m one of themHe sights in again.No time forLack of PTSDHe only hopes thatGentle BenIncrease-the-Peace Benis one of them, too, now.Now, Ben.Find your inner Taliban.”

“He feelsennuidepressionadrift in his life. Purposeless, perhaps because—dig a well in the Sudan and thejanjaweed come in and shoot the people anyway—buy mosquito nets and the boys you save grow up to—rape women—set up cottage industries in Myanmar and the army—steals them and uses the women as slaves andBen is starting to be afraid that he is starting to share Chon’s opinion of the human speciesthat people are basicallyshit.”

“The boys quiet until Ben looks across the table at Chon, holds his thumb and index finger a millimeter apart, and says, “We’re that close to being gay.”They laugh for half an hour.Collective dicks”

“I’m not—Lady MacbethLucrezia BorgiaCatherine the Great. I am—a woman doing what she has to do. I am—the woman you made me.Elena is at war.”

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

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

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

“And it's all fun and games until someone loses an I.”

“Simon drove as if he knew something about physics that Einstein hadn’t thought of and God never intended. If nature abhorred a vacuum, Simon positively loathed one, and rushed to fill in the tiniest gap in the heavy flow of speeding traffic. He passed on the right, left, center, and all variations in between, and the Keble responded as if involved in some kind of blood compact with its human master.”

“What happened? Stan repeats. To us? To the country? What happened when childhood ends in Dealey Plaza, in Memphis, in the kitchen of the Ambassador, your belief your hope your trust lying in a pool of blood again? Fifty-five thousand of your brothers dead in Vietnam, a million Vietnamese, photos of naked napalmed children running down a dirt road, Kent State, Soviet tanks roll into Prague so you turn on drop out you know you can't reinvent the country but maybe you reimagine yourself you believe you really believe that you can that you can create a world of your own and then you lower that expectation to just a piece of ground to make a stand on but then you learn that piece of ground costs money that you don't have. What happened? Altamont, Charlie Manson, Sharon Tate, Son of Sam, Mark Chapman we saw a dream turn into a nightmare we saw love and peace turn into endless war and violence our idealism into realism our realism into cynicism our cynicism into apathy our apathy into selfishness our selfishness into greed and then greed was good and we Had babies, Ben, we had you and we had hopes but we also had fears we created nests that became bunkers we made our houses baby-safe and we bought car seats and organic apple juice and hired multilingual nannies and paid tuition to private schools out of love but also out of fear. What happened? You start by trying to create a new world and then you find yourself just wanting to add a bottle to your cellar, a few extra feet to the sunroom, you see yourself aging and wonder if you've put enough away for that and suddenly you realize that you're frightened of the years ahead of you what Happened? Watergate Irangate Contragate scandals and corruption all around you and you never think you'll become corrupt but time corrupts you, corrupts as surely as gravity and erosion, wears you down wears you out I think, son, that the country was like that, just tired, just worn out by assassinations, wars, scandals, by Ronald Reagan, Bush the First selling cocaine to fund terrorists, a war to protect cheap gas, Bill Clinton and realpolitik and jism on dresses while insane fanatics plotted and Bush the Second and his handlers, a frat boy run by evil old men and then you turn on the TV one morning and those towers are coming down and the war has come home what Happened? Afghanistan and Iraq the sheer madness the killing the bombing the missiles the death you are back in Vietnam again and I could blame it all on that but at the end of the day at the end of the day we are responsible for ourselves. We got tired, we got old we gave up our dreams we taught ourselves to scorn ourselves to despise our youthful idealism we sold ourselves cheap we aren't Who we wanted to be.”

“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.”

“Smart people sometimes get stupid, but stupid people never get smart. Never. Ever. 'You can come down the evolutionary ladder,' Chon has observed to Ben and O; 'you can't climb up.”

“The Americans take a product that literally grows on trees and turn it into a valuable commodity. Withoutthem, cocaine and marijuana would be like oranges, and instead of making billions smuggling it, I’d be making pennies doing stoop labor in some California field, picking it.”

“You don’t let them knock you out, you make them knock you out. You make them break their fucking hands knocking you out, you let them know that they’ve been in a fight, you give them something to remember you by every time they look in a mirror.”

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