“Strike experienced a moment of pure clarity: he would never make it out of here, would never rise above his current position as Rodney’s lieutenant, because all the intelligence and prudence and vision came to nothing if it wasn’t tempered and supported by a certain blindness, an oblivious animal will that Rodney had, that he, Strike, did not have.
Rodney would survive all this not because of his guts or his brains, but because he understood that there was no real life out here on the street, no real lives other than his own, and that what really mattered was coming first in all things, in all ways and at all costs.”
― Richard Price, quote from Clockers
“Strike said "Huh" again, thinking about betrayal, about how everything and everybody were just so much smoke.”
― Richard Price, quote from Clockers
“everybody was full of shit in this game. The cops bullshitted each other, the dealers bullshitted each other, the cops bullshitted the dealers, the dealers bullshitted the cops, the cops took bribes, the dealers ratted each other out. Nobody knew for sure which side anybody was on; no one really knew how much or how little money anybody else was making. Everything was smoke.”
― Richard Price, quote from Clockers
“On the nights they went to bed at the same time, Rocco would lie there and watch her go to the closet, watch her choose either silky slips or mannish shirts, like running up sex flags from across the room.”
― Richard Price, quote from Clockers
“the only place a man can be truly handicapped is in his mind, and that a man who can conquer his own mind has got the world at his feet.”
― Richard Price, quote from Clockers
“Naw, I was like, coming from the benches.”
― Richard Price, quote from Clockers
“Yeah, uh-huh.” “OK. Were you coming from a store or something when you saw him?” “Naw, I was like, coming from the benches.” “And where was he?”
― Richard Price, quote from Clockers
“you saw him, said hello, how’s tricks . . .”
― Richard Price, quote from Clockers
“because, man, if this city ain't Caleb's mountain, I don't know what is, and those giants out there are just stomping people into the ground.”
― Richard Price, quote from Clockers
“while before deciding to make the rounds of”
― Richard Price, quote from Clockers
“York. Self-conscious about his own corrupted dimensions, he pushed himself away from the table and trotted across the traffic to the store. He almost sprained his wrist pushing on the locked door, then jumped a little at the delayed buzz of electronic permission. To Bind an Egg was about the size of”
― Richard Price, quote from Clockers
“balloons, all blown up. How, where and why he got”
― Richard Price, quote from Clockers
“Yeah, but I ain’t worried about it,” Rodney said,”
― Richard Price, quote from Clockers
“on the roof of the Accord again, then bent down, pressed his face against the driver’s”
― Richard Price, quote from Clockers
“being nice, setting him up. The glow in his belly got redder, but he also felt a new pain, a stabbing sensation, as if someone was in”
― Richard Price, quote from Clockers
“In the beginning - not now, thank God - Patty was always sharing the important books of her life with him, like Black Elk Speaks, The Golden Bough, and Hero with a Thousand Faces.”
― Richard Price, quote from Clockers
“were the worst—flirting with other guys in”
― Richard Price, quote from Clockers
“as a reminder to himself that at forty-three you don't make plans to dabble in different lives. At forty-three, what you are, what you know, is about as far as you're going to go in this life;”
― Richard Price, quote from Clockers
“out here?” he said quietly. “What?” The kid looked stricken. “Have I not treated you like a man out”
― Richard Price, quote from Clockers
“Saturday was a sweet and sunny day, the kind that made people think about getting it together once and for all -- health, kids, jobs, personal appearance, doing things right this time.”
― Richard Price, quote from Clockers
“Rocco drove up the West Side until they reached the Port Authority Bus Terminal.”
― Richard Price, quote from Clockers
“splattered all over the wall, come right up off his feet like a pulled puppet just”
― Richard Price, quote from Clockers
“The County Jail looked like a tall, forbidding elementary school. Seven stories of dirty brown brick, one hundred years old and now operating at 330 percent of capacity.”
― Richard Price, quote from Clockers
“Rocco watched Strike limp into the human slipstream of Eighth Avenue, watched him negotiate his way through lowlifes and taxpayers until he disappeared inside the terminal doors without a backward glance.”
― Richard Price, quote from Clockers
“His voice was languidly dense, as if he was a little slow on the uptake, but Strike knew that tone came from the man's feeling of complete control.”
― Richard Price, quote from Clockers
“Rocco was gripped with the panic he often experienced around her, around himself. He seemed to be both here now and simultaneously five years in the future looking back at this moment, at the loss of this moment. He was always sliding past the nowness of being with her, throwing himself at her like a cranked-up insincere clown for an exhausting fifteen minutes a day or getting cozy with booze in order to achieve the proper mood, and from the time she was born he had felt he was on his deathbed, remembering with regret how skittish and slippery his time with her had been. Had been, as if she were a hard thirty-seven and divorced instead of a two-year old baby, as if he were eighty-six and senile instead of forty-three and slightly overweight.”
― Richard Price, quote from Clockers
“It was time to chuck this life, with its Jo-Jos and Rodneys, its bloody burning children and walking-dead parents, just kick dirt over the whole show, like a cat burying its shit.”
― Richard Price, quote from Clockers
Richard Price
Born place: in Bronx, NY, The United States
Born date October 12, 1949
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“Hearts are like stones on an ocean beach, she says. An people are like the tides that leave permanent marks on them.”
― Loretta Ellsworth, quote from In a Heartbeat
“This man was a rogue, not because circumstances forced him to be a criminal but because he was born that way. He was probably conning his mother out of her milk the moment he could grin. He'd charm the clothes off a virgin in twenty minutes. And if the poor fool took him home, he'd drink her dad under the table, beguile her mother, charm her grandparents, and treat the girl to a night she'd never forget. In the morning, her dad would be sick with alcohol poisoning, the good silver would be missing together with the family car, and in a month, both the former virgin and her mother would be expecting.”
― Ilona Andrews, quote from Fate's Edge
“Thomas (his middle name) is a fifth-grader at the highly competitive P.S. 334, the Anderson School on West 84th in New York City. Slim as they get, Thomas recently had his long sandy-blond hair cut short to look like the new James Bond (he took a photo of Daniel Craig to the barber). Unlike Bond, he prefers a uniform of cargo pants and a T-shirt emblazoned with a photo of one of his heroes: Frank Zappa. Thomas hangs out with five friends from the Anderson School. They are “the smart kids.” Thomas is one of them, and he likes belonging. Since Thomas could walk, he has constantly heard that he’s smart. Not just from his parents but from any adult who has come in contact with this precocious child. When he applied to Anderson for kindergarten, his intelligence was statistically confirmed. The school is reserved for the top 1 percent of all applicants, and an IQ test is required. Thomas didn’t just score in the top 1 percent. He scored in the top 1 percent of the top 1 percent. But as Thomas has progressed through school, this self-awareness that he’s smart hasn’t always translated into fearless confidence when attacking his schoolwork. In fact, Thomas’s father noticed just the opposite. “Thomas didn’t want to try things he wouldn’t be successful at,” his father says. “Some things came very quickly to him, but when they didn’t, he gave up almost immediately, concluding, ‘I’m not good at this.’ ” With no more than a glance, Thomas was dividing the world into two—things he was naturally good at and things he wasn’t. For instance, in the early grades, Thomas wasn’t very good at spelling, so he simply demurred from spelling out loud. When Thomas took his first look at fractions, he balked. The biggest hurdle came in third grade. He was supposed to learn cursive penmanship, but he wouldn’t even try for weeks. By then, his teacher was demanding homework be completed in cursive. Rather than play catch-up on his penmanship, Thomas refused outright. Thomas’s father tried to reason with him. “Look, just because you’re smart doesn’t mean you don’t have to put out some effort.” (Eventually, Thomas mastered cursive, but not without a lot of cajoling from his father.) Why does this child, who is measurably at the very top of the charts, lack confidence about his ability to tackle routine school challenges? Thomas is not alone. For a few decades, it’s been noted that a large percentage of all gifted students (those who score in the top 10 percent on aptitude tests) severely underestimate their own abilities. Those afflicted with this lack of perceived competence adopt lower standards for success and expect less of themselves. They underrate the importance of effort, and they overrate how much help they need from a parent.”
― Po Bronson, quote from NurtureShock: New Thinking About Children
“Because of the unknowable, life means something. When everything is known, then everything is flat. You will be fed up, bored.”
― Osho, quote from Intuition: Knowing Beyond Logic
“Reporters trade in pain. It sells papers. Everyone knows that.”
― Jonathan Maberry, quote from Dead of Night
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