Top 150 David Baldacci Quotes (2025 Update)
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101. “People who believe themselves to be True patriots tend to be zealots. Zealots, in my opinion are one short step from being lunatics.”

— David Baldacci

102. “Lots of people don’t talk about their military service.” “I bet heroes do.” “No. A pretty accurate rule of thumb is the people who did the most talk about it the least. The blowhards are the ones who did squat.”

— David Baldacci

103. “They were not rich. They were not powerful. They were truly the forgotten.”

— David Baldacci

104. “My God, the whole world is collapsing. Why can’t people just sit and read books and be nice to each other?”

— David Baldacci

105. “Why are trains so popular at Christmas? People get on to meet their country over the holidays.”

— David Baldacci

106. “Luther glanced at the framed prints on the nightstand and wryly observed the twenty-something “little woman” next to the seventy-something husband. There were many types of lotteries in the world and not all of them state-run. Several.”

— David Baldacci

107. “You fought for the flag and country you represented. But you really fought for the guy beside you.”

— David Baldacci

108. “The opportunity came up here, and presto, there you go. Sometimes that’s all you need for a major life change: a dream.”

— David Baldacci

109. “Well, honey, I’m a sixty-three-year-old fat woman with sore feet, high blood pressure, and the beginnings of diabetes. I know I don’t have all that much time left, and I can either spend it moping and complaining about the things I never got to in life, or I can do something I love and help people along the way. I decided to keep plugging ’til I drop.”

— David Baldacci

110. “But then again, you could never underestimate the stupidity of some people.”

— David Baldacci

111. “At the end of a lifetime’s worth of lights and nights, it seemed that family was really the only important thing there was. And yet how many of us truly appreciated that significance before our last breath left us? We lost family all the time, and we mourned them and buried them and remembered them. Wouldn’t it be better to celebrate family while they are alive to a greater degree than when they are no longer with us?”

— David Baldacci

112. “DB. What finally got.”

— David Baldacci

113. “Some people take 10 years to write a book and some can do one in under a year.”

— David Baldacci

114. “And he and millions of others had just fought a world war to ensure that neither anarchy nor fascism nor anything else would replace the reasonable screwing over of people without money by those who possessed damn near all of it.”

— David Baldacci

115. “Businesses don’t give a crap about creating jobs. They care about making money. With robots, you’ll just need some tech guys to maintain and repair them.”

— David Baldacci

116. “Humans were imperfect beings operating in a world over which they had diminishing control.”

— David Baldacci

117. “The Pullers sat there for a long time together, big, strong, and courageous men transformed back into two little boys by an old man’s loving words that had come a lot later than they should have.”

— David Baldacci

118. “National security trumps a lot. It can trampke civil rights. It can denude personal liberties. But it cannot and never will triumph over political gamesmanship. – Kelly Paul.”

— David Baldacci

119. “I look for material that both interest me and challenges me. If I am drawn to the material and I have to work hard at it, the characters and the plots reflect the hours and hours of research.”

— David Baldacci

120. “It would cut into him at unpredictable moments, like a gutting knife made of colored light.”

— David Baldacci

121. “The prisoners had also turned to look at Mars. Those doing push-ups and pull-ups stopped. They wiped off their hands and moved back against the wall. And waited. Their expressions were clear. Thank God it’s not me. The news had spread fast. Mars might be getting out after nearly being put to death.”

— David Baldacci

122. “It was the darkest moments before dawn broke. He had been here for hours. It felt like ten minutes, because he really hadn’t come up with anything. But that was okay. Miracles and epiphanies rarely happened in the middle of criminal investigations. If you wanted something like that you needed to turn on the TV.”

— David Baldacci

123. “Tazburg, Mise, Divine, South Ridge.” He read the names off the.”

— David Baldacci

124. “I had my papers in for detective before I left. I’ve got my forensics certifications. I notice stuff. I sweat the details. And this is my town,” she added. “I know everybody here. And I mean everybody, because there aren’t that many of us.”

— David Baldacci

125. “Smart, dedicated people lost their lives all the time as they trained to be the best they could be to serve their country. Celebrities broke a nail and they immediately took to Twitter, alerting their millions of followers to the “injury,” which in turn elicited thousands of replies from people with apparently not enough going on in their lives. And all the while brave men and women died in silence, forgotten by all except their families.”

— David Baldacci

126. “That’s what civilization sometimes did to threats, real or perceived. They walled them off. Us against them. Survival of the fittest. You die so I can live.”

— David Baldacci

127. “It’s not so much that time heals all wounds, as it is the passage of the years that lets us make peace with our grief in our own way.”

— David Baldacci

128. “Robie took a deep, cleansing breath. He had never played well with others. For the last dozen years he had worked in almost total isolation. He preferred it that way. He was better alone than with a team. That’s just how he was built.”

— David Baldacci

129. “Dead by her hand. All dead. The price of her freedom? Chung-Cha’s soul.”

— David Baldacci

130. “You really think so?” said Robie. “These are guys. All guys think girls talk to each other. They’ll come back for the kid for sure.” “You’re just tryin’ to scare me,” said Emma smugly. Reel shrugged. “We don’t need to. They killed one sister. They’ve probably got Sara now. They’ll kill her too, like they tried to do last night.” “What?” said Emma, looking startled. “Robie, I’m telling you, let’s just ride.”

— David Baldacci

131. “Maybe I shot the sheriff and the deputy.”

— David Baldacci

132. “A politician and his entourage on the campaign trail were like a herd of elephants: they could travel nowhere lightly. They stomped the earth until it hurt with the weight of the guards, chiefs of staff, spokespersons, speechwriters, publicity folks, gofers and others. It was a spectacle that if it didn’t make you laugh would at least cause you considerable worry about the future of the country.”

— David Baldacci

133. “The theory of mutual assured destruction was a great catalyst for peace.”

— David Baldacci

134. “She works in the intelligence field. They’re trained to lie and sell it like the truth. They obviously undergo the same indoctrination as politicians.”

— David Baldacci

135. “We’ve got some unholy badasses in here, as you know. But nobody.”

— David Baldacci

136. “The police, he knew, had already copied the.”

— David Baldacci

137. “For me, the Canyon isn’t just a tourist destination. It’s a living, breathing place. It has a dozen plants that live nowhere else.”

— David Baldacci

138. “He filled a bowl with cereal that looked like twigs a squirrel had pooped out.”

— David Baldacci

139. “A pretty accurate rule of thumb is the people who did the most talk about it the least. The blowhards are the ones who did squat.”

— David Baldacci

140. “You have to give it thought when you’re changing your whole life.”

— David Baldacci

141. “Life is what it is, Will. You take it as it comes.”

— David Baldacci

142. “We lost family all the time, and we mourned them and buried them and remembered them. Wouldn’t it be better to celebrate family while they are alive to a greater degree than when they are no longer with us?”

— David Baldacci

143. “Nobody likes to admit they were suckered. It’s easier on the psyche to keep living the lie.”

— David Baldacci

144. “It only matters, Devine, to you. But I would say this: Life is a long enough journey without having only negative motivations to get your ass out of bed every day. What I’m offering you is, once again, something.”

— David Baldacci

145. “I was always unfailingly polite to Ladon-Tosh. I didn’t care if he never looked at me or spoke to me. I just wanted him to know that he had a friend in me.”

— David Baldacci

146. “Males. You have to lead them to the water and then show them how to slurp it.”

— David Baldacci

147. “It is more than a mere rule, for rules can be changed. It is truth.”

— David Baldacci

148. “People who attempted to end their lives, no matter how amateurishly they might do so at first, often got better at it, with the result that on the third, fourth or sixth try, they ended up on a slab with a coroner poking around their remains.”

— David Baldacci

149. “It was blood. Blood that looked as if it had just been spilled. As I watched, it started pouring down the cavern’s walls.”

— David Baldacci

150. “The money folks will forgive a lot if the cash keeps rolling in. Same goes for the government.”

— David Baldacci