Martin Cruz Smith

“This is a city of ghosts, and I am the ghost-in-chief.”

“We are all bitched from the start and you especially have been bitched.”

“You're a policeman. You're paid to be a liar. You're paid to be a traitor. You're paid to be a killer.”

“In this country, the law is not a shield. It is a sword.”

“The first rule of investigation is to never trust a coincidence.”

“Everyone is the same. The same jealousy, the same ambition, the same fears. It's only the language that's different.”

“The trick is to be an idealist without being an idiot.”

“All revolutions are betrayed.”

“You see what you want to see. It’s the oldest trick in the book.”

“Fear is a great motivator. It's what keeps us alive.”

“A person is a sum of his memories.”

“I believe in luck, but I also believe in preparing for the lucky break.”

“You are what you do. Not what you say, not what you believe, not how you vote, but what you spend your time on.”

“Truth is like the sun. You can shut it out for a time, but it ain't goin' away.”

“The first rule of investigation is that you don't know anything.”

“All Russians love melancholy. It's the national pastime.”

“There's no point in being a hero if you have to be a martyr.”

“We are all ghosts. We are all what we have done.”

“What good is a map if you don't know where you're going?”

“I think of myself as a reporter who writes novels. I'm not a novelist who happens to be a reporter.”