Sara Paretsky Quotes

I got it, I dove on the floor, he dove on my head and I hit my teeth on the ground. It was just one of my police reactions to get that criminal off me.

I can remember a couple of real fights when I ran. Because they were kinda dangerous.

The only time you're calm, you're centered, you're at peace, is when someone's trying to kill you. And that's just plain twisted.

Basically, my problem was attributed to stress more than anything. I don't know what that does and I guess doctors can tell you that there's chemicals that build up in your system when you go through a lot of stress and constant stress.

Adrenaline is an amazing thing.

You do run and scream and cry and work yourself up into hysterics, and then you get back to the hotel at the end of the day, and you feel really off and really strange. And that's because rationally, even though you know everything is OK, you have put yourself through this traumatizing experience, and your body is still going.

Adrenaline really numbs out all pain.

When I see action sequences I like, I imagine what I would do if it were me in the fight.

When you get hit to the body, you don't even worry about your face no more.

We'll attack anyone who tries to harm our citizens.

Fear gives sudden instincts of skill.

You go into this survival instinct mode, when you feel like your life is in jeopardy. I found myself in the bathroom with my taser, which I have 10 of, my panic button and my cell phone. It was the most terrifying experience I've ever had in my life

My friend taught me this one. You take the heel of your hand, you can shove someone's nose right through their brain. I can't even watch someone blow their nose. If I'm in a fight, I'm not gonna be shoving or poking, I'm gonna be running or begging - that's my two choices, right there.

As a professional athlete I can tell you I feel every single emotion and not one of them ever helped me in a fist-fight before.

All the general fear I've been feeling condenses into an immediate fear of this girl, this predator who might kill me in seconds. Adrenaline shoots through me and I sling the pack over one shoulder and run full-speed for the woods. I can hear the blade whistling toward me and reflexively hike the pack up to protect my head. The blade lodges in the pack. Both straps on my shoulders now, I make for the trees. Somehow I knew the girl will not pursue me. That she'll be drawn back into the Cornucopia before all the good stuff is gone. A grin crosses my face. Thanks for the knife, I think.

Biology designed the dance. Terror timed it. Dictated the rhythm with which their bodies answered each other. As though they already knew that for each tremor of pleasure they would pay with an equal measure of pain. As though they knew that how far they went would be measured against how far they would be taken.

When we were almost to the other campus, I felt the weird nausea hit me. I called a warning to Christian, just as a Strigoi grabbed him. But Christian was fast. Flames wreathed the Strigoi's head. He screamed and released Christian, trying frantically to put the flames out. The Strigoi never saw me coming with the stake. The whole thing took under a minute. Christian and I exchanged looks. Yeah. We were badasses.

If you are unwilling to defend your right to your own lives, then you are merely like mice trying to argue with owls. You think their ways are wrong. They think you are dinner.

See, Josh, that's what you do when someone slaps you in the face. So the next time it happens to you, try to retaliate.

The joy of surfing is so many things combined, from the physical exertion of it, to the challenge of it, to the mental side of the sport.

Speeding is like drugs. It makes everything come at you fast, and when you go back to normal driving, safe driving, prudent driving, it seems boring. That's the danger of drugs. At first it's intoxicating, but then the rest of your life you're trying to find that very first time. It never is the same.

Some people who hated Americans set out to kill a lot of us and they succeeded [on 9/11]....We're trying to protect ourselves with more weapons. We have to do it, I guess, but it might be better if we figured out how to behave as a nation in a way that wouldn't make so many people in the world want to kill us.

On the very instant that we know that our assailant intends us serious physical harm, we must work just as fast as we can.

I was much more afraid in Montgomery when I had a gun in my house. When I decided that I couldn’t keep a gun, I came face-to-face with the question of death and I dealt with it. From that point on, I no longer needed a gun nor have I been afraid. Had we become distracted by the question of my safety we would have lost the moral offensive and sunk to the level of our oppressors.