17 Quotes by J.N. Chaney

Neither fat nor muscular, he gave the impression of someone who frequently yelled at waiters for not getting his food just right.

Everyone seems to think power comes from a weapon, from something you can hold in your hands and aim at someone’s skull. A bully picks up a stick in the schoolyard and makes a threat, and see how he is rewarded. The weaker children obey, not out of love, but fear. This practice doesn’t change when we grow older. The only thing that changes is the stick becomes a bomb, and the bully wears a uniform and calls himself a king.

But living an easy life isn’t the same as being fulfilled. It doesn’t mean you’ll be happy.

Every leader who made a difference didn’t do it with a sword or a gun, but with a voice that might have moved a mountain.

That’s what it means to be human, Siggy. Living with the weight of your past and learning to walk forward with it.

I guess a walk by the water wouldn’t kill me.

But I wasn’t most men, and optimism, more than not, got men like that killed. I preferred to prepare for the worst and expect the worst. A pessimist all the way.

Exploiting situations to gain public favor is politics in a nutshell, darling.