Mal Peet

History is the heavy traffic that prevents us from crossing the road. We're not especially interested in what it consists of. We…

— Mal Peet

“You do not win a war by dying for your country. You win a war by making sure that some poor bastard…

— Mal Peet

“This line of reasoning could have frightened him, but it did not. He gained a certain strength from it. Because, after all,…

— Mal Peet

“Unfortunately, however, weapons of mass destruction tend to attract maniacs: men - it's almost always men - who want to jab the…

— Mal Peet

“Boredom had not been among the dangers that the SOE had prepared him for. No pompous little officer had stood in front…

— Mal Peet

“Wagstaff was a trim little man in a dark-blue uniform with an armband embroidered with the words CIVIL DEFENSE. "Thank you, Headmaster,…

— Mal Peet

“Let me tell you something. When there is a penalty kick, most people think that the penalty taker is in control. But…

— Mal Peet

“Sprawled, bloody, holding the pistol, he looked like a police photograph of a suicide. Dart went back to his chair and picked…

— Mal Peet

“I can explain to you why algebra is useful. But that is not what algebra is really for.' He moved his fingers…

— Mal Peet

“So? You think people stop talking to you when they are dead?”

— Mal Peet

“It still, after all these years, puts frost into my blood to remember that men like LeMay and Powers had their fingers…

— Mal Peet

Sentimentality and nostalgia are closely related. Kissing cousins. I have no time for nostalgia, though. Nostalgics believe the past is nicer than…

— Mal Peet

“Shit! Those sons a bitches Russians!”

— Mal Peet

“Kennedy was not perfectly sure that Khrushchev was an entirely rational being. He was not absolutely certain that the Soviet Union wouldn't…

— Mal Peet

“What I'm trying to explain to my sulky little cousin is that we are doing things backwards. We are going from the…

— Mal Peet

“He taught me that language was rubbery, plastic. It wasn't, as I thought, something you just use, but something you can play…

— Mal Peet

“In London, I was unique. But down here, where I was a bungalow one minute and a funeral parlour the next, I…

— Mal Peet

“He didn't respond for several seconds. Then he said, "You see things... sometimes you see things that make you think the rest…

— Mal Peet

“We should just bomb them back to the Stone Age.”

— Mal Peet

“He loved her. It was dead simple, the way he loved her. Seamless. His love was like a wall that he'd built…

— Mal Peet

“But when I stood there and saw that the end of the journey was as vague and unreachable as the beginning had…

— Mal Peet

“But I get ahead of myself, which is nearly as bad as getting Above Myself.”

— Mal Peet

“If there was ever a species that deserved purging from the surface of the planet, it is humanity. We are, or should…

— Mal Peet

“The US military and the CIA got busy working on plans for the conquest of Cuba. And it would be no Mickey…

— Mal Peet

“If you weren't here and Oma died, I'd deal with it. Because there'd be nothing more to lose. It'd be just me.…

— Mal Peet