Terry Hayes Quotes

The driver thought I was crazy—but then his religion thinks stoning a woman to death for adultery is reasonable, so I figured we were about even.

Apart from opium poppies and hemp plants, kidnappings for ransom had become about the only growth industry in Afghanistan.

Edmund Burke said the problem with war is that it usually consumes the very things that you’re fighting for—justice, decency, humanity—and I couldn’t help but think of how many times I had violated our nation’s deepest values in order to protect them.

The killer had obviously grasped one important concept, a thing that eludes most people who decide on her line of work—nobody’s ever been arrested for a murder; they have only ever been arrested for not planning it properly.

The Saracen approached them and lifted the woman’s robe in order to examine her more closely. Underneath, he saw that her cotton shirt was crumpled and ripped and her jeans had lost the buttons at the fly. He couldn’t help but wonder what had happened to her on the trip—the outlaws who abducted her might have been devout Muslims but they were also men. Her tattered shirt barely covered her belly, and the Saracen, being a doctor, guessed from the sight of it that she was about four months pregnant. A different man—a less religious and a more humane man—might have been affected by it. But not the Saracen—the prisoners weren’t people to him, they were a gift from God.

A few years after the bonfire of the mob came for him and his family. Like he said, it's always the same—they start out burning books and end up burning people. Out of his parents and five kids, he was the only survivor.
"He passed through three camps in five years—all of them death camps, including Auschwitz. Because it was such a miracle he had survived, I asked him what he had learned.
"He laughed. 'Nothing you call original,' he said. Death's terrible, suffering's worse, as usual the assholes made up the majority—on both sides of the wire.
"Then he thought for a moment. There was one thing the experience had taught him. He said he'd learned that when millions of people, a whole political system, countless numbers of citizens who believed in God, said they were going to kill you—just listen to them."
Whisperer turned and looked at me. "So that's what you meant, huh? You've been listening to the Muslim fundamentalists?"
"Yes," I replied. "I've heard bombs going off in our embassies, mobs screaming for blood, mullahs issuing death decrees, so-called leaders yelling for jihad. They've been burning books, Dave—the temperature of hate in parts of the Islamic world has gone out to Pluto. And I've been listening to them."
"And you don't think we have—the people in Washington?" He said it without anger. I was at one time a leading intelligence agent and I think he genuinely wanted to know.
"Maybe in your heads. Not in your gut."

I had read about it, of course, but I had never actually seen the machinery of a totalitarian state in full flight. For anyone who values privacy and freedom it’s a terrifying thing to behold.

I’ve always been pretty much on the outside of any side you can find.

I went to open the front passenger’s door. It was locked and she indicated the rear seat. Apparently it was okay for a Muslim woman to lead a man to his death but not to share the front seat with him.

Heavily armed men in uniform were everywhere, but there was nothing you could call genuine security: as usual, too many guns, not enough intelligence.

Several guards and retainers exchanged a glance—Gaza was not somewhere to be taken lightly; it was probably the only place in the world that made Afghanistan look safe.

In the Army, as in life, sometimes you had to create a crisis in order to get people’s attention.

Set amid rolling acres of lavender, the complex of seven luxurious homes, swimming pools and lavish stables was surrounded by a twelve-foot wall patrolled by what we believed to be Albanians armed with Skorpion machine pistols. This was strange, given that the family was in the wholesale florist business. Maybe flower theft was a bigger problem in northern Greece than most people realized.

We’ve got one huge advantage—people believe what they see in databases. They’ve never learned the most important rule of cyberspace—computers don’t lie but liars can compute.

I slept, and dreamed that life was beauty;
I woke, and found that life was duty.