Top 80 John Sandford Quotes (2025 Update)
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51. “Flowers wouldn’t be buttering their toast after the next election, but Pweters might be.”

— John Sandford

52. “They gathered around the living room TV and the media woman plugged a thumb drive into the digital port and brought the advertisement up: Smalls was dressed in a gray pin-striped suit, bankerish, but with a pale blue shirt open at the collar. He was in his Minnesota Senate office, with a hint of the American flag to his right, a couple of red and white stripes – not enough of a flag display to invite sarcasm, but it was there.”

— John Sandford

53. “You know, I believe every word you’ve said, but I don’t need this. I’ve got six officers working for me full-time, plus four reserve deputies and a dog, and the dog got his feet cut up on broken glass yesterday and he’s out of it for a week. That means two guys for busy shifts, one guy for others. The dog has the most experience. Not counting the part-timers, he might even be the smartest. I include myself in that. I’ve never investigated anything more complicated than mailbox theft.”

— John Sandford

54. “They both knew what they were thinking, though neither said it: Taryn Grant had what it took to be president. She had the business background, she understood economics and finance, she had the money wrapped up, she looked terrific, she had a mind that understood the necessary treacheries: a silken Machiavelli.”

— John Sandford

55. “You think we could get them around by the pool?” Taryn asked. “Well, we could, but why would we?” “Because it looks rich. The point is, if this hurts me, I’ll be hurt with the more conservative voters out here,” Taryn said. “The richer ones. I want to make the point, ‘I’m one of you.’ I’ve got the liberals no matter what.”

— John Sandford

56. “He thought Emily Dickinson was perhaps the best writer America had ever produced; but on this day, heading east out of the Cities, then south down the river, he thought of how some of the writers, Poe and Hemingway in particular, used the weather to create the mood and reflect the meanings of their stories.”

— John Sandford

57. “We ain’t in California no more,” Pilate said. “Every fuckin’ body up here’s got a gun. Even that old lady in the hamburger shop, shot Michelle.”

— John Sandford

58. “It’s the way of the world, man. There are the worker bees, and the manager bees. The worker bees take care of the work, the manager bees take care of themselves.”

— John Sandford

59. “Uh-uh, not the way it works,” Means said. He was a fleshy man, with nicotine-stained teeth and drooping cheeks. And, “Say, didn’t you work for Virgil Flowers for a while, up in Minnesota?”

— John Sandford

60. “Her Pan-Cake makeup was cracking like a dried-out Dakota lake bed.”

— John Sandford

61. “Volvos are fundamentally invisible.”

— John Sandford

62. “I am not so afraid that I cannot see the truth.”

— John Sandford

63. “But as cops began to develop FBI-like attitudes, and to build FBI-like fortresses, as they sealed themselves away in patrol cars, as they fended off contact with the public, they began to resemble a paramilitary force, rather than peace officers.”

— John Sandford

64. “She had eyes that Rembrandt would have painted.”

— John Sandford

65. “You’re saying the media is dangerous, immoral, and antidemocratic?”

— John Sandford

66. “They were the rumors that might follow any rich man who stayed to himself, Virgil thought, and who at the same time was thoroughly hated.”

— John Sandford

67. “Though wickedly aware of his surroundings, he didn’t look around; looking around attracted the eye. People who saw him would ask themselves, “Why’s that guy looking around like that?” He’d learned not to do it.”

— John Sandford

68. “Now Flowers was arguing the same thing back to him. If Dannon and Carver had killed Tubbs, Lucas wouldn’t find out about it except by accident. If justice were to be done, it would have to be extrajudicial.”

— John Sandford

69. “Felt the dark finger of hypocrisy stroking his soul.”

— John Sandford

70. “They don’t have a lot of crime in the countryside other than theft. But every once in a while, things turn ugly, and when they turn ugly, they turn very ugly.”

— John Sandford

71. “When I told my father I wasn’t going to be a minister of any kind, he said that I should never take cover in life, that I should stand out in the wind. Feel it. I’m trying to do that.”

— John Sandford

72. “He went on like that for a while, and before he was done, Lucas had dismissed him as being ineffectually goofy, although his ideas about the killing were roughly the same as Lucas’s own. Holly said he had no idea who on the staff might have been involved with Tubbs, or might be working as a spy.”

— John Sandford

73. “All right. I’ll keep it quiet.” “Attaboy. This thing is going to work out, Lucas. For us. It really shouldn’t matter whether we get the killer this week or in two weeks. What matters right now is to try to square up this election. Let’s focus on that: you do what you do, and let me try to get things straight with the voters.”

— John Sandford

74. “Marlys was a sturdy woman in her fifties, white curls clinging to her scalp like vanilla frosting. She wore rimless glasses, a homemade red-checked gingham dress, and low-topped Nikes. Short-nosed and pale, she had a small pink mouth that habitually pursed in thought, or disapproval.”

— John Sandford

75. “Mount Pleasant was an older town, where no two houses, standing side by side, seemed to come out of the same architectural style, with nineteenth-century Victorians up against pastel-colored postwar ramblers. Most of the houses had traditional flower gardens with marigolds and zinnias, and some with head-high sunflowers.”

— John Sandford

76. “You know anything about farms?” “Worked on one, up in Marshall,” Virgil said. “One of the big corporate places owned by Hostess. Harvest time, I’d be out picking Ding Dongs and Ho Hos – we didn’t do Twinkies; those were mostly up along the Red River. We’d box them up, ship them off to the 7-Elevens. Hard work, but honest. I used the money to buy BBs, so I could feed my family. Most of the local workers have been pushed out by illegals, now.”

— John Sandford

77. “It’s darker than a black cat’s ass in a coal mine, when you get back there.”

— John Sandford

78. “This boy’s been married so often he’s got rice burns on his face.”

— John Sandford

79. “The ME’s investigator and the crime-scene people began consulting about the removal of Peck’s body. The investigator told Virgil, “She didn’t eat him much, but she did crush his head like an English walnut.” Jenkins.”

— John Sandford

80. “Scratching their nails on the blackboard of futility.”

— John Sandford

81. “There are more numb-nuts around here than in the Florida state legislature, which, believe me, was a whole passel of numb-nuts.”

— John Sandford

82. “Call it what you want, a bump stock turns an AR into a machine gun.”

— John Sandford

83. “We’ll have set back New York heroin dealing by at least an hour and only cost the American taxpayers a couple of million.”

— John Sandford

84. “Women don’t learn any of that: when they fight, they’ll rip the gizzard out of anyone who gets in the way.”

— John Sandford

85. “Ruining you now would be like shooting a squirrel and mounting its head. Nobody would be impressed.”

— John Sandford