Top 80 John Sandford Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “I’m so horny the crack of dawn isn’t safe.”

— John Sandford

2. “Death had a strange effect on the left-behind people. Some found peace and a new life; some clutched the death to their breasts.”

— John Sandford

3. “The regular campaign staff, including the regular campaign manager, had no idea that the shadow staff existed.”

— John Sandford

4. “Nuts don’t come in bunches. Only grapes do.”

— John Sandford

5. “I’ve always been sort of interested in the rural countryside. Things happen out there that are very strange to city dwellers.”

— John Sandford

6. “Shrake asked. “I’m sweating like a blind lesbian in a sushi bar.”

— John Sandford

7. “I mean, the guy could fall in a barrel of titties and come out suckin’ his thumb.”

— John Sandford

8. “Her voice was stark as a winter crow.”

— John Sandford

9. “Just go outside and look at something and write it down and you’ll find it is a very nice piece of writing.”

— John Sandford

10. “If it’s criminal, it’s either stupid or crazy. Stupid people usually have guns, crazy people always do. In a choice between stupid and crazy, first investigate the stupid, because stupid is more common than crazy. In many cases, stupid is also more dangerous than crazy. You could.”

— John Sandford

11. “Like the NRA says, it’s better to have a machine gun and not need it than to need a machine gun and not have it.”

— John Sandford

12. “The aisles of the Varied Industries building had grown too coagulated, so Marlys led the girl around the building, the girl’s legs churning to keep up. They came out directly behind the fire hydrant that they’d planted the night before, separated from it by the dense crowd. Marlys asked a tall man at the back, “Do you see them yet?”

— John Sandford

13. “Murdered? Somebody murdered him?” Palmer was agog. A thin, soft man with a pitted nose and a bald, bumpy egg-shaped head dotted with dime-sized freckles, he was wearing jeans and a T-shirt that said, “NSA, Our Customer Service Pledge: You Talk, We Listen.”

— John Sandford

14. “Everything we’re doing is freakin’ iffy. That’s what makes it so much fun.”

— John Sandford

15. “D. Wayne Sharf slid across Winky Butterfield’s pasture like a greased weasel headed for a chicken house.”

— John Sandford

16. “His ex-wife, Truly, whom he still occasionally visited, wore various pieces of camo, depending on daily fashion demands – more at Walmart, less at Target.”

— John Sandford

17. “Okra is essentially a squid that grows in the ground instead of swimming in the ocean.”

— John Sandford

18. “Well, I am becoming doddering and old but I have – I’m writing two books a year now. It’s like 220,000 words or something like finished, and, honest to God, I can’t do that. I really do need the help of, you know, other people working with me.”

— John Sandford

19. “The Minneapolis City Hall is not a pretty building. A pile of red granite, a sullen nineteenth-century Romanesque lump, it squats amid the glittering glass-and-steel towers of the loop like a wart poking through a diamond necklace.”

— John Sandford

20. “There’s something about marriage that is not as intensely romantic or interesting as a couple’s first meeting.”

— John Sandford

21. “My problem with that is I don’t believe God cares what we do. Everything is equally relevant and irrelevant to God. A religion is nothing more than a political party organized around some guy’s moral views, Confucius, Buddha, Jesus, Mohammed, like conventional political parties are organized around some guy’s economic views.”

— John Sandford

22. “When any worthwhile thing is done in the world, it’s usually done by somebody weird.”

— John Sandford

23. “What Lucas would feel, instead, would be a murderous anger, an iceberg of hate. He would kill anyone who hurt Weather, Sam, or Letty. He’d be cold about it, he’d plan it, but the anger would never go away, and sooner or later, he would find them and kill them.”

— John Sandford

24. “The local farmers, of course, were bitching because the bean and corn harvests were going to be huge and the prices depressed. Of course, if it hadn’t rained, they’d be bitching because their crops were small, even if the prices were high. You couldn’t win with farmers.”

— John Sandford

25. “But the laughter was like a water bug on a pond, skating across the surface of his mind. He was amused and he laughed, but nothing was deeply funny; life was simply stupid most of the time.”

— John Sandford

26. “The nun said, “I can forgive the language. I’m not sure I can forgive your making an obscene gesture at your mother.” “Ya gotta know her,” Holland said. “If you knew her, you’d give her the finger, too.”

— John Sandford

27. “O’Dell’s driver was a broad man with a Korean War crew cut, his hair the color of rolled steel. A hatchet nose split basalt eyes, and his lips were dry and thick: a Gila monster’s.”

— John Sandford

28. “Most people who are trying to write kind of sit in their basements and pull it out of their imaginations.”

— John Sandford

29. “I’m not a responsible human being before noon. I don’t daylight; I really don’t.”

— John Sandford

30. “Everyone should have a hippie painter anarchist in their lives. It’s the guys in silvered aviators with guns that you’ve got to be wary of.”

— John Sandford

31. “I was skateboarding on the levee and lost my edges,” she said. “You were skateboarding?” She turned and looked at him and shook her head in exasperation: “No, you dummy, I fell. On the ice. On the sidewalk. Like old people do.” Virgil: “Oh.” She shook her head again. “Jesus wept.”

— John Sandford

32. “The Times, whose editorial portentousness approached traumatic constipation, tried to suppress its glee under the bushel basket of feigned sadness that another civil servant had been caught in a sexual misadventure; they hadn’t even bothered to use the word “alleged.”

— John Sandford

33. “I dream of an America where a chicken can cross the road without having its motives questioned.”

— John Sandford

34. “California is like a Nazi state with palm trees.”

— John Sandford

35. “Cops and schoolteachers,” Sloan said with satisfaction. “A cop and schoolteacher bar. The teachers drink like fish. The cops hit on the schoolteachers. One big happy family.”

— John Sandford

36. “Lucas’s Colt .45 Gold Cup and Beretta 92F, and drove up.”

— John Sandford

37. “If the AG had been a lightbulb instead of a lawyer, he would have been about a twenty-watt.”

— John Sandford

38. “You gotta try harder to be kind, man. We’re all trapped on this earth together.”

— John Sandford

39. “If a Martian were watching our television shows, he’d conclude that guns were more common than hammers. They’re not evil themselves – they’re tools – but everywhere you go, bad people have them. It behooves the righteous to at least know how they work.”

— John Sandford

40. “I’m pretty delicate,” Lucas admitted. “You know, when I’m not beating somebody senseless.”

— John Sandford

41. “They were shot with a shotgun and put in garbage bags and thrown under a bridge,” Shrake said. “If it wasn’t murder, it was a really weird accident.”

— John Sandford

42. “You have the feeling that if you get a Pulitzer, you’re somehow set for life.”

— John Sandford

43. “Yael chipped in: “He is trying to sell this artifact he stole. The people he is trying to sell it to are extremely dangerous. People who might kill him, if they need to, to get the stone.” Virgil added, “Hezbollah, among others.” Yael added, “And Texans.”

— John Sandford

44. “With most of my books, I’ll actually go out and look at the setting. If you describe things carefully, it kind of makes the scene pop.”

— John Sandford

45. “Focus on our ignorance.” She didn’t quite grasp the concept. She’d never been ignorant.”

— John Sandford

46. “Women are basically recreational areas, with several separate facilities available at any given time.”

— John Sandford

47. “Fresh ideas from this group was virtually an oxymoron, Marlys thought, wriggling her butt against the comfortless chair.”

— John Sandford

48. “I could live here,” Del said. “No, you couldn’t. You’d turn into a coot and hang out at the general store, with your fly down,” Lucas said. “You’d be known for goosing middle-aged women. You’d be the town embarrassment.”

— John Sandford

49. “If I get killed, put my boots back on me.”

— John Sandford

50. “The gun locked open and he slammed another magazine in. As he did it, he either saw or imagined he saw a ripple moving through the cornfield and fired four more shots at it, then stopped, crouched, and stepped sideways across the nose of the truck, saw Robertson facedown in the driveway gravel. He was alive, pushing up with his hands, getting nowhere.”

— John Sandford