How easy it was to capitalize on a person’s own bent for self-destruction; how simple to nudge them into non-being, then to stand back and shrug and agree that it had been the inevitable result of a chaotic, catastrophic life.
How could the death of someone you had never met affect you so?
The dead could only speak through the mouths of those left behind, and through the signs they left scattered behind them.
The whole world’s writing novels, but nobody’s reading them.
He wondered fleetingly how many people who sat alone for hours as they scribbled their stories practiced talking about their work during their coffee breaks….
the walking stick, like a burqa, conferred protective status…
Couples tended to be of roughly equivalent personal attractiveness, though of course factors such as money often seemed to secure a partner of significantly better looks than oneself.
The whole world’s writing novels, but nobody’s reading them. We need readers. More readers. Fewer writers.
She wuz depressed. Yeah, she wuz on stuff for it. Like me. Sometimes it jus’ takes you over. It’s an illness,” she said, although she made the words sound like “it’s uh nill
Hers was the kind of family that commissioned painters to immortalize its young: a background utterly alien to Strike, and one he had come to know like a dangerous foreign country.
In spite of her plainness that would have made wallflowers of other women, she radiated a great sense of self-importance.
Matthew would not like this, she had said. He would have liked it even less had he know how much Strike had liked it.
Fancourt can’t write women,’ said Nina dismissively. ‘He tries but he can’t do it. His women are all temper, tits and tampons.
Who was more conscious than the soldier of capricious fortune, of the random roll of the dice?
Hard to remember these days that there was a time you had to wait for the ink and paper reviews to see your work excoriated. With the invention of the internet, any subliterate cretin can be Michiko Kakutani.
Strike was becoming steadily more taciturn, his expression brooding. Robin wondered whether this was because he was hungry—he was a man who needed regular sustenance to maintain an equable mood—or for some darker reason.
I’d imagine “murderess” trumps “wife” when defining a close relationship.
Im.’ The monosyllable was heavy with contempt. ‘’E’s a twat.’‘Is he?’‘Yeah, ’e is. Ask Kieran.’She gave the impression that she and Kieran stood together, sane, dispassionate observers of the idiots populating Lula’s world.
…the safest way of ensuring that secret information did not leak was not to tell anybody about it.
You ought to give up detecting and try fantasy writing, Strike
Ridiculous,” he said breathlessly. “You ought to give up detecting and try fantasy writing.
..it is hard to throw off long-established love;Hard, but this you must manage somehow..
In the inverted food chain of fame, it was the big beasts who were stalked and hunted
Perhaps she had received diamonds, Strike thought; she had always said she didn’t care for such things, but when they argued the glitter of all he could not give her had sometimes been flung back hard in his face…
The act of shopping for what he needed, and of setting up the bare necessities for himself, had lulled Strike back into the familiar soldierly state of doing what needed to be done, without question or complaint.
Sixteen unseeing stone of disheveled male slammed into her; Robin was knocked off her feet and catapulted backwards, handbag flying, arms windmilling, towards the void beyond the lethal staircase.