162 Quotes by Don Winslow

As in life itself.” Xue Xin chuckled. “Are we its guest, or its prisoner?

Now he seeks truth in silence. He seeks God in the same, although he has come to believe that truth and God are the same. Truth, stillness, and God.

Mexico is a cemetery for secrets.

This is what Mexican cops appreciate that American cops don’t. We are partners, mi hermano Arturo, in the same enterprise. Comrades in the War on Drugs. We could not exist without each other.

He’s hunted enough guys to know that their own heads can be their worst enemies. They start seeing things that aren’t there, then, worse, not seeing things that are. They worry and worry, and chew on their own insides, until, when you do track them down, they’re almost grateful. By this time, they’ve been killed so many times in their minds that the real thing is a relief.

Mexico is a country where the temples of the new gods are built on the gravesites of the old.

The good things in this world aren’t done by saints. They’re done by compromised people doing the best they can.

His old priests might have told him there’s sins of commission not omission. It’s not always the things you do but the things you don’t do that will cost you your soul. Sometimes it’s not the spoken lie but the unspoken truth that opens the door to betrayal.

Their only weapon is shame, if the powerful can even feel it.