The Winter of Frankie Machine §
Highlights §
- Quality of life is about the little things—doing them well, doing them right. (Location 155)
- They know that you bribe a politician only once. After that, you blackmail him. (Location 387)
- “If you have a routine,” he has lectured, “you can always deviate from it if something comes up. But if you don’t have a routine, then everything is stuff that comes up. Get it?” (Location 425)
- “Why do you write it down if you make the call right away?” the kid Abe asks him. “Because the customer sees you write it down,” Frank tells him, “and he knows you take his business seriously.” (Location 449)
- Don’t think about that now, he tells himself. Take care of one thing at a time. (Location 1219)
- Now what you need is sleep, he thinks. A tired body and a fatigue-foggy head will get you killed. You need to think and act sharp, so the next thing is to get in bed and sleep. It’s a matter of will, turning off the paranoia, thinking rationally, and knowing that you’re safe here. An amateur would lie awake all night, starting at every noise, making up sounds when there aren’t any. He’s hunted enough guys to know that their own heads can be their worst enemies. They start seeing things that aren’t there, then, worse, not seeing things that are. They worry and worry, and chew on their own insides, until, when you do track them down, they’re almost grateful. By this time, they’ve been killed so many times in their minds that the real thing is a relief. (Location 1275)
- There comes a time in a man’s life, he figured, the infamous midlife crisis, when a guy has to face the reality that what he has is all he’s going to get, and he needs to find his peace and his happiness in his life as it is. (Location 2680)
- It was poison wrapped in candy, (Location 2782)
- delusions of grandeur (Location 3247)
- “I think it’s us. Once we stop trying to get them into bed—because now they’re always there—we stop making the effort. We turn them into wives.” (Location 3527)
- “Flushing the bird,” is what Bap had called it. “The bird might be safe hiding in the bush, but it sees the hunter and flies, and that’s what kills it.” (Location 3572)