Parker, Robert - All Quotations

Maybe the matter of understanding has been overrated. Maybe I don't have to understand your situation to sympathize with it, to help you alter it, to be on your side. I've never experienced starvation, either, but I'm opposed to it. When I encounter it, I try to alleviate it. I sympathize with its victims. The question of whether I understand it doesn't arise. … Maybe civilization is possible, if at all, only because people can care about conditions they haven't experienced.

¶ A Savage Place (1981)

Added 01-Feb-2004 | Last update 28-Feb-2007
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Lots of real creeps have self-respect. They just have a creepy version of it.

¶ A Savage Place (1981)

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The thing about monsters is, you want to kill them until you meet them, and when you meet them they don't seem monstrous, and killing them begins to seem unkind.

¶ Crimson Joy (1988)

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Nature hates a vacuum. If there are no things which are important, then things are assigned importance arbitrarily and defended at great risk. Because the risk validates the importance.

¶ Double Deuce (1992)

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If you'll excuse the phrase, it's the way life is. You don't know what's going to happen. People whose lives work best are the ones who recognize that and, having done what they can, are ready for what comes.

¶ Early Autumn (1981)

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Too much positive is either scared or stupid or both.

¶ Early Autumn (1981)

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"The truth will set you free," Paul said. His voice was angry.

"Not necessarily," I said. "But pretend sure as hell doesn't do it."

¶ Pastime (1991)

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Most people I know, in fact, are a little afraid of flying. But you fly anyway because life's too complicated if you don't, and you don't pay much attention, unless you're phobic, to whether in fact you are afraid.

¶ Small Vices (1997)

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I hadn't smoked in ten or twelve years, but I wished then I'd had a cigarette that I could have taken a final drag on and flipped still burning into the river as I turned and walked away. Not smoking gains in the area of lung cancer, but it loses badly in the realm of dramatic gestures.

¶ The Judas Goat (1978)

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Robert Parker (b. 1932) American writer

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