Ya Spy Thriller Quotes

If you die, it will be my fault, and I can't live with that." He leaned down, bringing his lips so close they brushed against hers as he whispered, "Or without you. ~ Erin Beaty

She'll need a code name of her own."
Quinn tapped his quill on the table as he read over Mouse's notes for the tenth time. They were like a flock of gabbling birds, these ladies, following the lead of the one in front. "Starling."
Cass nodded as he opened the door. "Starlings are smart birds."
"I know. Annoying as hell, too. ~ Erin Beaty

You will only be as good, as changing, as imaginative as those who control you and those who would presume that society will benefit only by their dictates at the expense of the freedoms of all the others. ~ Volker G. Fremuth

If this were some kind of entertainment, this would be roughly the point where Rupert said, "We don't have any more time, Professor, you must complete your research as soon as possible," but there was no great sense of urgency, no sense that it even mattered. It was just something that Rudi was interested in, for his own reasons. They could be working on this for years and still not understand it, and it wouldn't make a blind bit of difference.
He said, "Look, Professor, a lot of effort went into getting you that information. We'd be grateful if you could make some kind of sense of it reasonably soon.
"There is one thing I can tell you right now," Lev said..."Whoever is running this thing, they're really interested in railways. ~ Dave Hutchinson

They watch through cameras, listen to phone calls, read e-mail, record conversations; they don't even need a court order to do it and then they do it under the guise of patriotism. ~ Volker G. Fremuth

For me, to take a movie and travel the world and go and work with these cultures and an international cast and have this spy thriller that's not just about character but also action and suspense, they're very challenging films as a producer to make, creating stories, creating set pieces that serve this character [Ethan Hunt]. ~ Tom Cruise

Several pallets had been pulled to the middle of the open space and stacked two high with a large blanket over them. The implication stunned her – it was so unexpected, so unlike what she believed about him – her mind only registered denial.
She heard Ash bolt the door and remove his leather jacket, felt his hands on her shoulders as he turned her around to face him. He stroked her cheek with one hand while the other reached for his belt. "My sweet, innocent Sage," he whispered, and still her thoughts could gain no traction.
There was the snap of a release from his belt, and though she continued to meet his eyes, she saw a sheathed dagger in the hand he raised between them.
"Tonight I must teach you how to kill a man. ~ Erin Beaty

We each play several roles in life – that doesn't make them all lies. ~ Erin Beaty

He'd done this hundreds of times: done a job, been drugged with a narcotic that erased his short term memory, and dumped in a seedy hole in the wall locale, where when he climbed out, he would have to figure out where he was, find a payphone, and call in for his next job. ~ Jennifer Arnett

He offered me a ride up from the abyss and I took it. But a ride with the devil is never free. And accepting that ride can only lead to hell. ~ S.D. Skye

Mr. Rogan, I am magician, not God. ~ Kenneth Eade

Noriega wound up like a baseball pitcher on top of the bed and hurled the small gun, but was low and outside for a ball. His tight-fitting house dress was bunched up high on his chubby thighs, exposing olive drab underwear.
I see London, I see France, I see a crazy dictator's underpants!
Chase's thoughts raced. ~ Cole Alpaugh

And in a land accustomed to so much anguish, Chase tried to be careful with words. His soccer moms began assigning
nicknames during the first day of official practice: Difom, Kakas, Kochma, and Maldyok, which roughly translated to Deformed, Carcass, Nightmare, and Bad Eye.
He made a new rule regarding nicknames. ~ Cole Alpaugh

To aspire to utopia at all cost, especially at the cost of freedom, is to seal your fate either to live bitter and frustrated with the impossible quest. ~ Volker G. Fremuth

I'm not a spy, I'm an agent. There's a difference. I'm protecting you, not that you seem to be grateful."
"You're protecting me. How old are you anyway?"
"Fifteen."
"Fifteen? You can't even drive!"
"I can drive," I responded. It's just that certain officers say I may not drive."
"WTF?" she said. "We're going into Afghanistan, and they've sent a pre-driver."
Pre-driver? Was that even a word? And I was here specifically because Talya and Thorne were so young. "I thought you were sixteen," I said.
"I can drive," she responded haughtily. ~ Axel Avian

I think it was the sense that Turn is a spy thriller, and that's a genre that really fascinates me, in general. ~ Jamie Bell

In a short story by Chekhov or a novel by Balzac he found mysteries which, so far as he was aware, did not exist in any spy thriller. 35 ~ Amos Oz

We no longer solve problems; we just push technology. Today it's a matter of code and software. Most of the creativity is gone. You already know you can do it. It's just a matter of how much code and time it will take. ~ Volker G. Fremuth

Part of me, Adventurous Mia, Brave Mia, F.O.U.N.D. Field Department Poster Girl Mia wants to leave immediately-right-now to get this done and over with, rip it off like a Band-Aid. The other part of me, Scared Teenage Soon-to-be-Senior Mia doesn't know what she wants. She sure as hell doesn't want to run headfirst into a mess bigger than anything she's ever faced in her entire life, but she also loves Dave. Both of the Mias do. They would do anything for him. I would do anything for him, even if it means dying to try to protect him. That's what scares me the most. ~ Morgan M. Steele

Obviously, 'Homeland' is not just a spy thriller. It's more than that, but 'Tyrant' will be a bit more of a palace drama. It'll be about the families, but there will be political intrigue as well. ~ Adam Rayner

All great ideas, all great leaps of progress, all have a wake of sacrificial bodies. ~ Volker G. Fremuth

The black bird cocked its head to one side, and then said, in a voice like stones being struck, 'You shadow man.'
'I'm Shadow,' said Shadow. The bird hopped up onto the fawn's rump, raised its head, ruffled its crown and neck feathers. It was enormous and its eyes were black beads. There was something intimidating about a bird that size, this close.
'Says he will see you in Kay-ro.' tokked the raven. Shadow wondered which of Odin's ravens this was: Huginn or Munnin, Memory or Thought.
'Kay-ro?' he asked.
'In Egypt.'
'How am I going to go to Egypt?'
'Follow Mississippi. Go south. Find Jackal.'
'Look,' said Shadow, 'I don't want to seem like I'm-- Jesus, look...' he paused. Regrouped. He was cold, standing in a wood, talking to a big black bird who was currently brunching on Bambi. 'Okay. What I'm trying to say is I don't want mysteries.'
'Mysteries,' agreed the bird helpfully.
'What I want is explanations. Jackal in Kay-ro. This does not help me. It's a line from a bad spy thriller. ~ Neil Gaiman

Ark Storm - what if you could control the weather? ~ Linda Davies

It's a pook, a messenger...spy is more like it," Kern explained sourly. "This one will tattle, and I'll never hear the end of it when I go back." An eyebrow lifted. "Consorting with a human. ~ Lori J. Fitzgerald

Nobody seems to remember you from any of your employers."
"I guess I'm not very memorable ~ Kenneth Eade

Anyone who thinks life is boring hasn't lived ~ Fred Cooper

Why is the public so blindly self-destructive? So willing to enslave itself for a free trinket or empty promise? ~ Volker G. Fremuth

If you lust for power, she will swallow you in an instant and make you her servant. ~ Volker G. Fremuth

Young people looking for adventure fiction now generally turn to fantasy, but for those of a certain age, the spy thriller has long been the escape reading of choice. ~ Michael Dirda

Power is an ill-tempered and treacherous mistress. She corrupts even the incorruptible. If you value your freedoms you will have to bind her and keep her from your lands and leaders, because she will seize their minds and seduce their consciences until they give in to her insatiable appetite. ~ Volker G. Fremuth

We can do more for the people if they are not so aware of what we are trying to do. ~ Volker G. Fremuth

Eventually we'll all be living comfortably and provided for, even if caged like a poor zoo animal. ~ Volker G. Fremuth

Cono felt embarrassed by the thought that he might have been just another pitiful orphan trying to turn his friends into family, and that he might be blinded by this need, a need that colored his whole life, that ache to offer worth to someone. ~ Victor Robert Lee

In almost every thriller, a point is reached when someone, usually calling from a phone booth, telephones with a vital piece of information, which he cannot divulge by phone. By the time the hero arrives at the place where they had arranged to meet, the caller is dead, or too near death to tell. There is never an explanation for the reluctance of the caller to impart his message in the first place. Certainly, the convention existed well before the age of the tape recorder and the wiretap. Not on the phone, in a spy or mystery story, has always been, in and of itself, sufficient to hold up the resolution of the case for a long, long time. ~ Renata Adler

Being shaken to death by a Hawaiian tourist look-alike was not how Arena imagined her death. ~ Lynn Blackmar

The people are just the unwitting slaves of their representative governments, the best of which are like insatiable leeches that suck the lifeblood from their populations. The people then foolishly and euphorically rejoice when the body politic belches up a modest excess of their own blood for them to take back. ~ Volker G. Fremuth

He was one of the masters of the thriller and he really was one of the great signposts, because he took the spy thriller out of the gentility of the drawing room and into the back streets of Istanbul and where it all really happened, ... The Day of the Jackal. ~ Frederick Forsyth

Do not lament the suffering we have to endure to fulfill the dream but rejoice in the courage with which we will face it. ~ Volker G. Fremuth

Limp finally spoke. Do you think you could kill a person and not get all crazy about it? ~ Cole Alpaugh

The two smallest boys were cut down first, bodies bounding in different directions as they were shot from opposite sides of the field, like pinballs caught in a tight corner. ~ Cole Alpaugh

He felt as though the bones of his ribcage were snapping beneath the weight of the stone that God had laid over his heart. ~ Daniel Silva

Allow yourself to fall, giving up the effort to learn how to fly, knowing someone will be there to catch you. ~ Volker G. Fremuth

I think it's more difficult now to write a spy thriller with the collapse of the Soviet Union. Many authors have tried, but few have succeeded in capturing the interest of readers. ~ Nelson DeMille

Truth is irrelevant; what matters is what people believe. ~ Henry Mosquera

He took it out like a sprinter, and brought it home like a distance swimmer. ~ Jennifer Lane

Books said nothing for a few minutes. Then, gazing out over the water, watching a sailboat heeled over, cutting across the bay, he asked, "What next?"
I said evenly, "I'm going to kill the two men who murdered Carolyn. ~ David Grant Urban

Will you be okay or is there something I could help you with?"
"I'm just going to change in to comfy clothes and hit the sheets."
"And what's the verdict on whether or not you want my help with that?" He flashed a cocky smile at me. He was undeniably sexy, in an "I-have-poison-blood-in-my-veins" sort of way. ~ Kelly Hashway

Literature is the extant body of written art. All novels belong to it.
The value judgement concealed in distinguishing one novel as literature and another as genre vanishes with the distinction.
Every readable novel can give true pleasure. Every novel read by choice is read because it gives true pleasure.
Literature consists of many genres, including mystery, science fiction, fantasy, naturalism, realism, magical realism, graphic, erotic, experimental, psychological, social, political, historical, bildungsroman, romance, western, army life, young adult, thriller, etc., etc…. and the proliferating cross-species and subgenres such as erotic Regency, noir police procedural, or historical thriller with zombies.
Some of these categories are descriptive, some are maintained largely as marketing devices. Some are old, some new, some ephemeral.
Genres exist, forms and types and kinds of fiction exist and need to be understood: but no genre is inherently, categorically superior or inferior.

(Hypothesis on Literature vs. Genre) ~ Ursula K. Le Guin

He guessed the NKVD didn't even know that Waffen-SS men could be identified by the blood-group tattoos on the underside of their left arms, usually near the armpit. Richter didn't have one. He'd been classed as a non-combatant, as he'd said, at least for a portion of the war. He decided it could be weeks before they found out who he was.
But Volsky's confidence appeared to have been restored too, now. He said, 'And the vat of incense?'
'I had the incense brought from the remnants of a Christmas smoker factory. Silly little hollow figurines invented by toymakers in the Ore Mountains. Cone incense burns down inside the figurines and the smoke emerges from the open mouths. There was a glut of them,' Richter said, truthfully. 'Berliners were shocked and saddened after Stalingrad. But they lost the will to celebrate after the Battle of Kursk. They knew the Red Army was coming. The puerile little incense smokers were redundant, together with the incense they were to hold. Except it didn't go to waste. The vat was taken from a merchant's house. It's from Hong Kong, I think.'
Volsky leaned back in his chair. He said, 'Why go to all the trouble?'
That's a good question, Richter thought.
He stifled a smile. 'To mask the smell. ~ Gary Haynes

In an Anglo-Saxon thriller, the villain is generally punished, and the strong silent man generally wins the weak babbling girl, but there is no governmental law in Western countries to ban a story that does not comply with a fond tradition, so that we always hope that the wicked but romantic fellow will escape scot-free and the good but dull chap will be finally snubbed by the moody heroine. ~ Vladimir Nabokov

Yet after all there is nothing so deceptive as one's outward appearance. The reason of this is that as soon as childhood is past, we are always pretending to be what we are not
and thus, with constant practice from our youth up, we manage to make our physical frames complete disguises for our actual selves. It is really wise and clever of us
for hence each individual is so much flesh-wall through which neither friend nor enemy can spy. Every man is a solitary soul imprisoned in a self-made den
when he is quite alone he knows and frequently hates himself
sometimes he even gets afraid of the gaunt and murderous monster he keeps hidden behind his outwardly pleasant body-mask, and hastens to forget its frightful existence in drink and debauchery. ~ Marie Corelli