Anecdotally his fitness reports rated him well above average in the classroom, excellent in the field, fluently bilingual in English and French, passable in Spanish, outstanding on all man-portable weaponry, and beyond outstanding at hand-to-hand combat. Susan knew what that last rating meant. Like having a running chainsaw thrown at you

A handgun at two hundred feet is the same thing as crossing your fingers and making a wish.

He looked at the pain and he set himself apart from it. He saw it, examined it, identified it, corralled it. He isolated it. He challenged it. You against me? Dream on, pal. He built borders for it. Then walls. He built walls and forced the pain behind them and then he moved the walls inward, compressing the pain, crushing it, boxing it in, limiting it, beating it.

I know I'm smarter than an armadillo

It's a kind of zen question: if you write a book and no one reads it, is it really a book?

The way to write a thriller is to ask a question at the beginning, and answer it at the end.

The most sustained feat of imagination in mystery fiction today.