Quotes by Spies - Page 2

[The official prosecutors] ... were more vengeful on behalf of our injuries than I myself could ever be.

The monsters of our childhood do not fade away, neither are they ever wholly monstrous

When a problem threatens to engulf you, there's nothing like irrelevant detail to keep your head above water.

God’s justice in the one, and his goodness in the other, is exercised for evermore, as the everlasting subjects of his reward and punishment.

Tyranny is like the electric wiring in an old house. A tyrant dies, the new tyrant takes possession, and all he has to do is drop the switch.

When the truth finally catches up to you, don't be a hero and run.

The kernel of truth sank into the fertile soil of [her] imagination, possibilities for a happy resolution suggesting themselves in vague flashes of potential and promise...

Liberty? Independence? Are they to remain only words? Gentlemen, let us make them fighting words!

one of those world builders who do othing but destroy,

Middle children weep longer than their brothers and sisters. Over her mother’s shoulder, stilling her pains and her injured pride, Jackie Lacon watched the party leave. First, two men she had not seen before: one tall, one short and dark. They drove off in a small green van. No one waved to them, she noticed, or even said goodbye. Next, her father left in his own car; lastly a blond, good-looking man and a short fat one in an enormous overcoat like a pony blanket made their way to a sports car parked under the beech trees. For a moment she really thought there must be something wrong with the fat one, he followed so slowly and so painfully. Then, seeing the handsome man hold the car door for him, he seemed to wake, and hurried forward with a lumpy skip. Unaccountably, this gesture upset her afresh. A storm of sorrow seized her and her mother could not console her.

Some men will never be heroes, some heroes will never be men, he thought, with urgent acknowledgements to Joseph Conrad.

His intuition was luminous from the instant you met him. So was his intelligence. A lot of actors act intelligent, but Philip was the real thing: a shining, artistic polymath with an intelligence that came at you like a pair of headlights and enveloped you from the moment he grabbed your hand, put a huge arm round your neck and shoved a cheek against yours; or if the mood took him, hugged you to him like a big, pudgy schoolboy, then stood and beamed at you while he took stock of the effect. (About Philip Seymour Hoffman)

I once heard someone say morality was method. Do you hold with that? I suppose you wouldn't. You would say that morality was vested in the aim, I expect. Difficult to know what one's aims are, that's the trouble, specially if you're British.