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Author: John Swartzwelder
Quotes of Author: John Swartzwelder
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  1. John Swartzwelder _ The Time Machine Did It

    As my exciting story opens, I am being punched in the stomach. But I guess a lot of stories start that way."
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  2. John Swartzwelder _ The Time Machine Did It

    I try to maintain a positive attitude at all times, because clients notice little things like that, and if you're frowning and crying all the time and saying "why? why?", they get worried. So I try to stay upbeat.
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  3. John Swartzwelder _ Detective Made Easy

    Everybody loves a good car chase. There's something in it for everyone: plenty of high-speed action, lots of crashes and explosions, romance possibly, and all the property damage you could reasonably want. And nobody ever seems to get seriously hurt. I lost track of how many times a cop car behind me crashed and burned and all I could hear back there was: "Are you okay?" and "Of course I'm okay." And whenever I crashed my truck I yelled out that I was okay too. It's what you're supposed to do, but it's not really necessary. Everybody knows you're all right. It's a car chase. Being in a car chase is like playing a video game, only safer.
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  4. John Swartzwelder _ The Time Machine Did It

    Any calls?" I asked. She didn't look up from her magazine. "What am I, your secretary?" "Yes." "Look, just leave me alone.
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  5. John Swartzwelder _ The Time Machine Did It

    Now, I'm not the most observant of men, which is unfortunate, because I'm a private eye.
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  6. John Swartzwelder _ The Last Detective Alive

    I was just turning away to leave when I noticed a slight distortion in the air in the shape of a hole at the point where Blinky had disappeared. It was so faint you couldn't see it if you were looking directly at it. You had to kind of catch it out of the corner of your eye. I put my hand in the middle of this distortion and not only did my hand vanish, but I could feel it being sucked down deeper into the hole. I yanked it out, after some effort. Then I put an eye to the hole. Same thing happened. What was going on here? I looked around, found a cat, and experimentally tossed it in. The cat disappeared, and moments later an ancient statue of the cat approving an important law appeared on the street nearby.
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  7. John Swartzwelder _ The Time Machine Did It

    I'm 190 pounds of rock hard muscle, underneath 40 pounds of sturdy protective fat. It's important to have that layer of fat. You can't have guys hitting you in your muscles all the time. But that extra padding also cushions the blow for your opponent's fists, which allows him to slug you longer and with more abandon. So that layer of fat is both a good and a bad thing, I guess. It works both ways is what I'm saying.
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  8. John Swartzwelder _ The Time Machine Did It

    He told me the crooks used this place for more than just a dumping ground for undesirables. He said they also had a lot of food stored here in case there was ever a nuclear war. That way they could insure that in the future there would still be criminals.
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  9. John Swartzwelder _ The Time Machine Did It

    I indicated that I had some free time at the moment and was willing to investigate what sounded like a most important case. "How much do you charge?" he asked. "$500 a day, plus expenses." "Will the expenses make it less?" "Possibly, but in my experience expenses usually add to the total." He thought about this for a moment, then frowned. "Well, I suppose I should just forget about it then. Spending $500 a day to find something worth $20 wouldn't make economic sense." "That's true, if it's just the money you're concerned with here and not the justice angle." "No, it was the money more than anything else. I guess it would be cheaper to just buy another one.
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  10. John Swartzwelder _ The Time Machine Did It

    I've been told by people that I'm shaped kind of like a garbage can, but I don't know if that's the truth, or just some kind of an insult.
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  11. John Swartzwelder _ The Time Machine Did It

    This guy was making me tired. "Thanks for the afternoon's entertainment," I said. "I'll flush a copy of my bill down the toilet. You should be getting it in a couple of days.
    book-quotehumorhumourinsult

  12. John Swartzwelder _ The Time Machine Did It

    It's tough to make a living in my racket. Most people who need detecting done just go to the cops. They're free. I have to charge money for essentially the same service. Another thing that makes it tough is that I'm not the best detective in town. In fact in this building you have to pass the offices of three detectives who are better than me to get to my place. So I guess I lose some business that way.
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