Michael Robotham Quotes

You try to understand human behavior. You try to explain it. Not me. I know we're smaller than gorillas, bigger than chimps, worse than both of them and, for all our rationality, our rules and laws, our baser drives are still straight out of the jungle.

The elephant in the room. It can't be talked about. It can't be ignored.

Anyone who says honesty is the best policy is living in la-la land. Either that or they have never been married or had children. Parents lie to their kids all the time--about sex, drugs, death, and a hundred other things. We lie to those we love to protect their feelings. We lie because that's what love means, whereas unfettered honesty is cruel and the height of self-indulgence.

Closing his eyes, he feels the weight of the angel as she straddles his thighs. She leans forward, her breath on his cheek, her lips close to his ear, whispering, 'Remember your promise.

Gennia is eating and talking to Ruiz on the phone. Each time he takes a mouthful, he catches a whiff of his shirt, which stinks of failure and yesterday.

I thought I knew everything about friendship and family: the happiness, simplicity and joy within them. But there is another side of devotion, a side which Samira understands.

They trap us like that - babies- with one look they can take hold of our hearts because our hearts have no defences against such beauty and fragility.

Audie was the cleverest man Moss had ever met. He was Yoda. He was Gandalf. He was Morpheus. Now he'd become a walking suicide note.

I try to explain how people react when overwhelmed by confusion and negative emotions. Some drink too much. Others overeat or beat their wives or kick the cat. And a surprising number hold their hands against a hot plate or slice open their skin with a razor blade. It's an extreme coping mechanism. They talk about their inner pain being turned outward. By giving it a physical manifestation they find it easier to deal with. (35)

I know the answer now, but I'm so frightened I've forgotten the question.

Specialists debated whether to pull the plug, but Texas only executes people on death row, not when they're brain-dead, because it might mean culling most of their politicians.

Violence is inevitable in crime novels, but there are many different ways to tell a story. I use my characters' reactions to illustrate the worst moments rather than let readers witness them at first hand.

All of my novels are seeded in real life events, and 'The Wreckage' is no different.

The cab drops Audie outside the Texas Children's Hospital. Money changes hands and the driver looks at the cash and suggests he deserves a tip. Audie says he should be nicer to his mother and gets a reply that no mother would approve of. pg.132

If I gave up sarcasm that would leave interpretive dance as my only way of communicating.

You know its going to be a bad day when you are having a prostate examination and you feel both of your doctor's hands on your shoulders!

Journalism took me around the world. I worked in London for ten years and reported on the collapse of the Soviet Union, the troubles in Northern Ireland, and the first Gulf War.

I don't know what else to tell you. I often think how different my life would have been - how much happier - if you'd been a part of it. One day.

You know why I love dogs more than people?" she shouts, everything about her softer. "Feed them and pet them and they'll love you when no one else will.

The hardest part of ghost writing other people's stories is capturing their voices so that it isn't you talking, it's them.

I once had a patient who was convinced that his head was full of sea water and a crab lived inside. When I asked him what happened to his brain he told me that aliens had sucked it out with a drinking straw.

"It is better this way," he insisted. "Now there's more room for the crab.

I write books that will make 10 or 12 hours disappear, and hopefully they'll resonate with you for a few days, where you'll remember the characters and the story. That suits me fine; I am happy with that.

Writing is what I do. It's what makes me tick.

Muhammad Ali has a lot to answer for. When he lit the flame at the Atlanta Olympics there wasn't a dry eye on the planet. Why were we crying? Because a great sportsman had been reduced to this-a shuffling, mumbling, twitching cripple. A man who once danced like a butterfly now shook like blancmange.
We always remember sportsmen. When the body deserts a scientist like Stephan Hawking we figure that he'll be able to live in his mind, but a crippled athlete is like a bird with a broken wing. When you soar the heights the landing is harder.

I write entertainment. There are some books you read but don't inhale. There are books that will change your life.

You're not supposed to have a favourite book - it's like children.

I wasn't always a novelist. I began my writing career as a journalist, working on an afternoon newspaper in Sydney, Australia, doing the crime beat and court reporting. Having grown up in a small country town, I felt as though I had nothing to write about.

Everyone thinks I'm so strong. They expect me to face autumns and winters like that and bitch-slap them down; make them come to heel. I'm not so strong. I only pretend.

Some lids are best kept closed, glued, nailed, screwed down and buried under six feet of earth.

So when you start getting scared, remember that the longest night is only eight hours and the longest hour is only sixty minutes. Dawn is always going to come - unless you don't want it to.

My other chore is to buy a tree- a thankless task. The only truly well-proportioned Christmas trees are the ones they use in advertisements. If you try and find one in real life you face inevitable disapointment. Your tree will lean to the left or the right. It will be too bushy at the base, or straggly at the top. Even if you do, by some miracle, find a perfect tree, if won't fit in the car and by the time you strap it to the rooftop and drive it home the branches are broken and twisted out of shape. You
wrestle it through the door, gagling on pine needles and sweating profusely, only to hear the maddening question from countless Christmases past: 'Is that really the best one you could find?

One of the strange things about friendship is that time together isn't cancelled out by time apart. One doesn't erase the other or balance it on some invisible scale. You can spend a few hours with someone and they will change your life, or you can spend a lifetime with a person and remain unchanged.

Love and pain are not the same. But sometimes it feels like they should be. Love is put to test everyday. Pain is not. Yet the two of them are inseparable because true love cannot bear separation.

I've discovered the secret of revenge. Outlive the f
ers! I'll dance on their graves.

Jealousy is a terrible thing. I know all the psychological triggers. The fear of losing control, the fear of loss, the fear of abandonment, neglect and loneliness ... But the most destructive thing about jealousy is that it kills what it values-the love you want to save won't survive the constraints of jealousy. There is no entitlement. Love is either equal or a tragedy.

There is a moment when all hope disappears, all pride is gone, all expectation, all faith, all desire. I own that moment. It belongs to me. That's when I hear the sound, the sound of a mind breaking. It's not a loud crack like when bones shatter or a spine fractures or a skull collapses. And it's not something soft and wet like a heart breaking. It's a sound that makes you wonder how much pain a person can endure; a sound that shatters memories and lets the past leak into the present; a sound so high that only the hounds of hell can hear it. Can you hear it? Someone is curled up in a tiny ball crying softly into an endless night.

He didn't lead anyone on, or make any promises. Instead he conveyed a sense of calm and equanimity, like a man who had banished from his life all superfluous sentiment, all longings and all patience for the nonessential. He was like Yoda, Buddha and the Gladiator all rolled into one.

I'd like to set a story in Australia, but I would need to feel confident my German and U.S. readers, for example, would stay with me.

It's strange, talking about love. I used to hate the word.
Hate is too strong. I was sick of reading about it in books, hearing it in songs, watching it in films. It seemed such a huge burden to place on another person - to love them; to give them something so unbelievably fragile and expect them not to break it or lose it or leave it behind on the No.96 bus.

I'm very critical of crime novels that use gratuitous violence to shock readers when it isn't necessary. If that's all you have to offer as a writer, perhaps you're in the wrong job.

Don't say anything unless you can improve on the silence.

Although reality can sometimes corrupt the fairy tale and alter our ambitions, some things remain unalterable. From the richest to the poorest, we start and end with family.

I normally sleep very well, but when I do have bad dreams, they always involve my children.

For a moment something struggles inside her. Then her mind empties and she surrenders. Fighting fate is too difficult. She must save herself to fight whatever fate throws up.

Remember, the worst hour of your life only lasts for sixty minutes. (292)

A perfect hero is about as boring as a perfect marriage.

Do you know that if you close your eyes really tightly, so you can see stars, when you open them again it's a brand new world.

That's the problem with folks nowadays. Nobody takes responsibility for their actions. Make a mistake and you pay for it. That's life.

What is the point of sharing your life with someone if you can't communicate with them about the things that matter?

People who lose children have their hearts warped into weird shapes. Some try to deny it has happened. Some pretend it hasn't. Losing friends or parents is not the same. To lose a child is beyond comprehension. It defies biology. It contradicts the natural order of history and genealogy. It derails common sense. It violates time. It creates a huge, black, bottomless hole that swallows all hope.

Life is short. Love is vast. Live like there's no tomorrow.

I'm so short I tread water in the kiddie pool. I need a ladder to get to the bottom bunk. I hit my head on the ground when I sneeze. I need a running start to reach the toilet. And no, I'm not related to Tom Cruise.

I have been visited by every shade of grief and know that it doesn't come in black or white

I know I should have ignored her. I should have called. Many times I almost did. I got as far as picking up the phone. Sometimes I even dialed your parents' number but then I wondered what I'd say to you. We had left it too long. How would we ever get around the silence, which was like an elephant sitting in the room?

In the mid-nineties, I quit my job as a senior feature writer at 'The Mail' on Sunday in the U.K. and became a 'ghost writer,' collaborating with politicians, pop stars, psychologists, soldiers and sporting legends who needed help in penning their autobiographies.

Loving children is easy. Keeping them is hard.

She's been used more often than a jailhouse condom.

Everybody you work with has their own voice, and if you do your job well enough, even their closest friends or their partner of 40 years isn't going to recognise the fingerprints of a ghostwriter.

You can't go alone."
"He won't see me otherwise. I'll make an appointment. People don't get killed when they make an appointment.

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The cab driver is staring at me in his mirror. I'm talking to myself.
"The second sign of madness," I explain.
"What's the first one?"
"Killing lots of people and eating their genitals."
He laughs and sneaks another look at me.

Her eyes brown in places that brown could only dream of reaching.

Raising children I've decided is a lot sadder than I expecte4d. Seeing them grow up brightly and vividly is tempered by the knowledge that each year brings another share of lasts. The last time I push my daughter on a swing. The last time I play Tooth Fairy or Santa Claus. The last time I read a bedtime story. If I could give my daughters one piece of advice I would tell them to make the most of the first times -their first kiss, their first date, their first love, the first smile of their first child…There can only be one.

People think it's easy to be cynical and pessimistic, but it's incredibly hard work. It's much easier to be hopeful.

I often joke that I could write 'War and Peace' and make it sound like Geri Halliwell wrote it.

Sometimes I wake at night and worry that I might have disappeared in my sleep. That's what happens when nobody cares about you. Bit by bit you begin to disappear until people look right through your chest and head like you're made of glass. It's not about love; it's about being forgotten. We only exist if others think about us. It is like that tree that falls in the forest with nobody around to hear it. Who the fuck cares except the birds?