John Sandford
John Sandford was born John Roswell Camp on February 23, 1944, in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. He attended the public schools in Cedar Rapids, graduating from Washington High School in 1962. He then spent four years at the University of Iowa, graduating with a bachelor's degree in American Studies in 1966. In 1966, he married Susan Lee Jones of Cedar Rapids, a fellow student at the University of Iowa. He was in the U.S. Army from 1966-68, worked as a reporter for the Cape Girardeau Southeast Missourian from 1968-1970, and went back to the University of Iowa from 1970-1971, where he received a master's degree in journalism. He was a reporter for The Miami Herald from 1971-78, and then a reporter for the St. Paul Pioneer-Press from 1978-1990; in 1980, he was a finalist for a Pulitzer Prize, and he won the Pulitzer in 1986 for a series of stories about a midwestern farm crisis. From 1990 to the present he has written thriller novels. He's also the author of two non-fiction books, one on plastic surgery and one on art. He is the principal financial backer of a major archeological project in the Jordan Valley of Israel, with a website at www.rehov.org In addition to archaeology, he is deeply interested in art (painting) and photography. He both hunts and fishes. He has two children, Roswell and Emily, and one grandson, Benjamin. His wife, Susan, died of metastasized breast cancer in May, 2007, and is greatly missed.
“Carol Druze Was A Stone Killer.”
“Time passes, but sometimes it beats the shit out of you as it goes.”
“Somewhere along the line, it occurred to him that he hadn't spoken to Virgil Flowers. He'd probably taken the day off, and knowing Flowers, he'd done it in a boat. The thing about Flowers was, in Lucas's humble opinion, you could send him out for a loaf of bread and he'd find an illegal bread cartel smuggling in heroin-saturated wheat from Afghanistan. Either that, or he'd be fishing in a muskie tournament, on government time. You had to keep an eye on him.”
“I once defenestrated a guy. The cops got all pissed off at me. I was drunk, but they said that was no excuse.""Ah well," Virgil said. Then, "The guy hurt bad?""Cracked his hip. Landed on a Prius. Really fucked up the Prius, too.""I can tell you, just now is the only time in my life I ever heard 'defenestration' used in a sentence," Virgil said."It's a word you learn after you done it," Morton said. "Yup. The New Prague AmericInn, 2009."Virgil was amazed. "Really? The defenstration of New Prague?”
“....there are as many nuts on the left as there are on the right, and in the long run, the lefties are probably more dangerous.”
“First she got Jesus, probably fifteen years ago, and that didn’t work out, so she tried Scientology, and that didn’t help, but it cost a lot of money, so she tried Buddhism and yoga, and those didn’t work, so she started drinking. I think that helped, because she’s still drinking.”
“Nuts don’t come in bunches. Only grapes do.”
“Does a chicken have lips?”
“Got here half an hour ago and had a look, eyeballin' it," Sawyer said. "It's murder, all right. Tell you something else - the sun went down, and it's as dark as the inside of a horses's ass out here.""You're sure?""Well, I've never actually been inside a horses's ass.”
“Does Raggedy Ann have a cotton crotch?”
“So she made no secret about being gay?""Why should she?" the little old lady asked. "Nobody would care but a bunch of stuffy old men.”
“Oh yeah, I heard you got born again.' she said. 'Which you needed since they fucked up the first time.”
“Never been there, the Middle East," Qatar said vaguely.”
“DDT stood for Dangerous Darrell Thomas. Thomas had given himself the name when he was riding with a motorcycle club and was interviewed for a public radio magazine. The magazine writer got it wrong, though, and referred to him as TDT--Terrible Darrell Thompson--which lost something of its intent when expressed as initials; and since the writer got the last name wrong, too, Thomas never again trusted the media.”
“I'll bring pajamas " she said. "Yeah? You have any idea how old I am?" "Not nearly as old as you're gonna be by midnight.”
“Even thinking was hard.”
“The day after the assignation with Barstad, the low stacked-heels of Charlotte Neumann, an ordained Episcopalian priest, author of New Art Modalities: Woman/Sin, Sin/Woman, S/in/ister, which, the week before, had broken through the top-10,000 barrier of the Barnes & Noble on-line bestseller list, and who was, not incidentally, the department chairperson, echoed down the hallway and stopped at his door.”
“Cinnamon Girl" wasn't right for this day, for this time, for what was about to happen. If he were to have music, he thought, maybe Shostakovich, a few measures from the Lyric Waltz in Jazz Suite Number 2. Something sweet, yet pensive, with a taste of tragedy; Qatar was an intellectual, and he knew his music.”
“The press conference was held in a courtroom at the new county courthouse, a space that did its best to translate justice into laminated wood.”
“Gonna rain like a cow pissin' on a flat rock" [drugstore clerk to detective Virgil Flowers]Dark of the Moon, p.7”
“I'm so horny the crack of dawn isn't safe.”
“I used to be a Catholic, and when I first started police work, I worried about that. I saw a lot of people dead or dying for no apparent reason . . . not people I killed, just people. Little kids who'd drowned, people dying in auto accidents and with heart attacks and strokes. I saw a lineman burn to death, up on a pole, little bits and pieces, and nobody could help . . . . I watched them go, screaming and crying and sometimes just lying there with their tongues stuck out, heaving, with all the screaming and hollering from friends and relatives . . . and I never saw anyone looking beyond. I think, Michael, I think they just blink out. That's all. I think they go where the words on a computer screen go, when you turn it off. One minute they exist, maybe they're even profound, maybe the result of a great deal of work. The next . . . . Whiff. Gone.”