Terry Hayes

"Not everybody knows this—or cares probably—but the first law of forensic science is Locard’s Exchange Principle, and it says “Every contact between a perpetrator and a crime scene leaves a trace.”"

"He came toward me and I realized I was being given the singular honor denied to so many dictators and mass murderers—I was going to be thrown out of a Swiss bank."

"The killer had obviously grasped one important concept, a thing that eludes most people who decide on her line of work—nobody’s ever been arrested for a murder; they have only ever been arrested for not planning it properly."

"Set amid rolling acres of lavender, the complex of seven luxurious homes, swimming pools and lavish stables was surrounded by a twelve-foot wall patrolled by what we believed to be Albanians armed with Skorpion machine pistols. This was strange, given that the family was in the wholesale florist business. Maybe flower theft was a bigger problem in northern Greece than most people realized."

"Edmund Burke said the problem with war is that it usually consumes the very things that you’re fighting for—justice, decency, humanity—and I couldn’t help but think of how many times I had violated our nation’s deepest values in order to protect them."

"I had got up in the morning and, by the time I was ready for bed it was a different planet—the world doesn’t change in front of your eyes; it changes behind your back."

"Crime intelligence reports from any police force in Europe would tell you that half of Albania was involved in the murder-for-hire business."

"The driver thought I was crazy—but then his religion thinks stoning a woman to death for adultery is reasonable, so I figured we were about even."

"We will never know exactly what the zoologist was accused of or what defense he offered because Saudi judicial proceedings, conducted in secret, aren’t concerned with time consuming niceties like witnesses, lawyers, juries, or even evidence. The system relies entirely on signed confessions obtained by the police. It’s strange how methods of torture are one of the few things that cross all racial, religious, and cultural boundaries—poor militia in Rwanda who worship ghosts use pretty much the same methods as rich Catholics supervising state security in Columbia. As a result, the Muslim cops who took the zoologist into a cell in a Jeddah prison had nothing new to offer—just a heavy-duty truck battery with special clips for the genitals and nipples."

"Despite its huge wealth, vast oil reserves, and love of high-tech American ornaments, nothing really works in Saudi Arabia."

"By this stage I had switched my patronage to AA—as Tolstoy might have said, drug addicts are all alike whereas every alcoholic is crazy in his own way. This led to far more interesting meetings and I had decided that if you were going to spend your life on the wagon, you might as well be entertained."

"I’ve always been pretty much on the outside of any side you can find."