Las Vegas Quotes

“Too young to party, just odd enough to participate in federal investigations of serial murder. Story of my life.”
― Jennifer Lynn Barnes, All In

“My captivity with Dimitri. The way his mouth—so, so warm, despite his cold skin—had kissed mine. The feel of his fangs pressing into my neck and the sweet bliss that followed...
He looked exactly the same too, with that chalky white pallor and red-ringed eyes that so conflicted with the soft, chin-length brown hair and otherwise gorgeous lines of his face. He even had a leather duster on.”
― Richelle Mead, Spirit Bound

“Bravery isn't when you go looking for trouble; bravery is when trouble comes looking for you.”
― P.I. Barrington, Final Deceit

“Las Vegas:
It was not cafe society, it was Nescafe society.”
― Noel Coward

“Packy watched her walk away, her perfect heart-shaped rear end testing the confines of her tight black dress. There was a God. Packy was now certain of it. How else could such heart-stopping beauty be accounted for? Such a thing could not be the product of a random universe. A flower, maybe. A rainbow, perhaps. But not Venus Versailles.”
― Quentin R. Bufogle, Wish You Were Here: Stories and Essays Inspired by Fabulous Las Vegas Postcards

“Bosch had never liked Las Vegas, though he came often on cases. It shared a kinship with Los Angeles; both were places desperate people ran to. Often, when they ran from Los Angeles, they came here. It was the only place left.”
― Michael Connelly, Trunk Music

“Las Vegas suggests that the thirst for places, for cities and gardens and wilderness, is unslaked, that people will still seek out the experience of wandering about in the open air to examine the architecture, the spectacles, and the stuff for sale, will still hanker after surprises and strangers. That the city as a whole is one of the most pedestrian-unfriendly places in the world suggests something of the problems to be faced, but that its attraction is a pedestrian oasis suggests the possibility of recovering the spaces in which walking is viable.”
― Rebecca Solnit, Wanderlust: A History of Walking

“The first thing he noticed was that Las Vegas seemed to have invented a new school of functional architecture, 'The Gilded Mousetrap School' he thought it might be called, whose main purpose was to channel the customer-mouse into the central gambling trap whether he wanted the cheese or not.”
― Ian Fleming, Diamonds Are Forever

“The view from the window, particularly if you enjoy neon, is extraordinary.”
― Chris Bachelder, Bear v. Shark

“The Strip was still lit by a million neon lights, though the crowds on the sidewalk had greatly decreased by this hour. Still, Bosch was awed by the spectacle of light. In every imaginable color and configuration, it was a megawatt funnel of enticement to greed that burned twenty-four hours a day. Bosch felt the same attraction that all the other grinders felt tug at them. Las Vegas was like one of the hookers on Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood. Even happily married men at least glanced their way, if only for a second, just to get an idea what was out there, maybe give them something to think about. Las Vegas was like that. There was a visceral attraction here. The bold promise of money and sex. But the first was a broken promise, a mirage, and the second was fraught with danger, expense, physical and mental risk. It was where the real gambling took place in this town.”
― Michael Connelly, Trunk Music

“The mere fact of Vegas, its necessity, was an indictment of our normal lives. If we needed this place--to transform into a high roller or a sexy swinger, to be someone else, a winner for once--then certainly the world beyond the desert was a small and mealy place indeed.”
― Colson Whitehead, The Noble Hustle: Poker, Beef Jerky, and Death

“Sympathy? Not for me. No mercy for a criminal freak in Las Vegas. This place is like the Army: the shark ethic prevails - eat the wounded. In a closed society where everybody's guilty, the only crime is getting caught. In a world of thieves, the only final sin is stupidity.”
― Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream

“As the other two men moved toward the parking lot, Jay turned Ellie so that she had to face him. Now that she was safe and he was able to touch her, the anger burning inside him pushed toward the surface. “We talk here or at home. Your choice.”

“Jay…”

“No,” he said savagely. “I come home on a break to find a bullshit note from you, throwing away our relationship like it meant nothing, then I find out from Wyatt that you quit with no notice. You’re going to talk about whatever the fuck scared you enough to run. So you get a choice. Here. Or home.”

Shifting from one foot to the other and still not looking at him, she finally whispered, “Home.”
― Katie Reus, Sensual Surrender

“The secret of Vegas is that money is boring.
Hence all the bluster.”
― Jace Clayton, Uproot: Travels in 21st-Century Music and Digital Culture

“Teachers are the most important component of a free society. And one of the most embattled. They are treated like the grease in a machinery grinding to nowhere instead of enlightened beacons of knowledge. Teachers are unappreciated, underpaid, and constantly criticized.”
― Jonathan Heatt, Teaching Las Vegas

“No story about Las Vegas should begin in Vegas. It is a place one goes, often rashly, and from which one returns often poorer in money and richer in experience. It is a crapshoot—pun intended—if the outcome will match the intention. Las Vegas will not disappoint, becoming a story one can tell in a bar, how one got an unfortunate tattoo, or drunkenly married a new acquaintance at the Little Vegas Chapel in front of an Elvis impersonator.”
― Thomm Quackenbush, Holidays with Bigfoot

“And the desert shall reclaim, it’s wealth!”
― Danikelii

“CCSD constantly recruits out-of-state teachers because the district doesn’t deliver on salary promises, which contributes to abysmal retention rates.”
― Jonathan Heatt, Teaching Las Vegas

“Sam tried to think of a quick explanation, but was too weary from lack of sleep to tackle the concept of Las Vegas in twenty-five words or less. Finally he said, “These are places where you go if you want to fuck up your life and you don’t have a lot of time to do it in.”
“Are we going to stop?”
“No, I seem to be fucking up at a fine rate of speed, thank you.”
― Christopher Moore, Coyote Blue

“Las Vegas was as real to me as Neverland, opulence built in the Mojave Desert by mobsters for sins I could not bring myself to commit. What business did I have in disgracing its doorstep?”
― Thomm Quackenbush, Holidays with Bigfoot

“Las Vegas may have residents and not merely tourists, but it does not want to welcome you. You are swallowed. Maybe it will hack up your hair and bones later, but the oddsmakers are not on your side.”
― Thomm Quackenbush, Holidays with Bigfoot

“Every surface encouraged the viewer to call and order a prostitute for fewer than fifty dollars. This did seem like a deal, but I did not know the going rate for a sex worker in this economy.”
― Thomm Quackenbush, Holidays with Bigfoot

“The heat of Vegas desiccates the unwary, its dryness sapping moisture from one’s mouth and eyes. Sweat evaporates too quickly to cool, its only evidence dusting of salt on one’s shirt. Las Vegas claims they are the sunniest, least humid state in the Union, which is boast-worthy to those not turning to tourist jerky.”
― Thomm Quackenbush, Holidays with Bigfoot

“Las Vegas, home to gambling, decadents, Mormons, and the largest number of IRS agents in the United States. Robert had a safe house there, but he wasn’t going to use it.”
― Kenneth Eade

“We would love it if you would join us for lunch to discuss amputations! We love amputations. And firefighters at MetroGen. Anyone else coming?

Cassie inviting firefighters to join the bachelorette party for lunch”
― Carina Alyce, Roulette

“I watched men win and I watched them lose. They were playing a straight house. Nothing was loaded. The house took its own little percentage and got rich. Money made in bootlegging and gunrunning and dope smuggling and whoremongering was invested quite properly in an entire town that stood as a monument to human stupidity, a boomtown in the state with the sparsest population and the densest people in the country.

Vegas.”
― Lawrence Block, Grifter's Game

“Already on that highway Las Vegas felt like a dream, fleeing from my memory, growing fuzzier and more unreal with every passing mile of creosote basin rimmed by jagged hills. Will what we call civilization go like that too, a brutal, gleaming, plasticized absurdity that we will recall less with nostalgia than with befuddlement and wonder that a whole species could consent to live that way? There are other ways. It's not too late to find them. One way or another, we will have to.”
― Ben Ehrenreich, Desert Notebooks: A Road Map for the End of Time

“This is Vegas, Coral. Which means bigger, bolder, and brighter than anything you've done thus far. It could catapult you into the spotlight.”
― E.F. Dodd

“Las Vegas at night is Aladdin’s Lamp. Magical.”
― Nkwachukwu Ogbuagu

“There's the Vegas you think you know, and then there's this!”
― Shaunda Necole, 100 Things to Do in Las Vegas Before You Die, second edition