Sleeper (Comic Book)/Quotes

"When you really think about it, most of life can be broken down into patterns... Learned behavior, habits — good or bad... These things dictate how we respond to the world around us. And if you look at your life hard enough, you can clearly see your own patterns. Covert Operatives are trained to look for patterns in their enemies, because once you can predict people's responses, you can defeat them. In fact, if you're really good, you can turn a person's bad habits against them so much that they become their own worst enemy."

--Grifter, Point Blank

“So my big plan, if you could call it that, was to just wait around until something jumped out at me…”

--Grifter, Point Blank

Lynch: “Look at this asshole. So much for Covert Oparations, huh? …It’s a new world isn’t it. It’s all out in the open now… These colorful suits, like neon signs flying through the skies… They ought to be ashamed of themselves."

Cash (narrating): [Lynch] hated his powers, and he hated thin new breed of post-humans who wanted to take the world in their hands and mold it… I guess he thought they were horning in on his territory or something.

--Sleeper

“I made a pledge when I joined I.O. to do what was best for the country, no matter what the cost, and I believe in that… I do.I don’t even hate him for using my father as part of his plan… My father was an asshole like Lynch and the rest of them. No, it’s the nights like this that I understand why I hate lynch… Nights when I have to sleep with the knowledge that I killed another deep cover agent just to save myself. That’s why I hate him… Because he makes me wonder just what the hell I’ve become."

--Holden Carver, Sleeper

"Two months ago the king of the world was blown out of the sky. The wreckage left his enemies pointing fingers at each other, and the following weeks saw their secret monarchy fractured into warring factions. Of course, if you’re not one of those privileged with this knowledge, all you can see is that the world is going to shit a little faster than it was before… Rising tensions between China and Russia, North Korea arming nukes, and the good old U.S. of A. trying to find a way to profit from it all. My boss, TAO, calls it the ‘New World Chaos’. Then he laughs really hard."

--Holden Carver, Sleeper

Miss Misery: "Tell me what you saw that night."

Holden Carver: "I saw pure evil. Evil Is Sexy And Jesus fucking Christ it was so beautiful."

--Sleeper

"My life has become post-ironic. That's when there's so goddamn much irony in everything that you do, that it collapses on top of itself. It stops being funny, even as black comedy. Even twenty years later, assuming you survive, you won't look back and laugh. You'll look back and shiver... maybe even get sick.

--Holden Carver, Sleeper

Holden: Even if we succeed we’d be outcasts from the entire world… But chances are more likely we’ll both end up dead.

Miss Misery: You fucker. You had to know I’d like those odds.

Holden (narrating): And yeah, I did. Too bad half of what I just told her was a lie.

— Sleeper

"This is TAO-- he may not look like much, but he's one of the scariest motherfuckers ever created... It's not like he's some psycho-killer, though. He's more like a brain surgeon, only his voice is the scalpel. TAO doesn't rip your guts out, he makes you rip them out on your own.

--Holden Carver, Sleeper