Philip Kerr Quotes

A lot of crime writing suffers from treading water. I feel an obligation to move the character on and not repeat myself. I try to fit him into a different period and a different agenda. That way, you learn slightly more about his personal history in the tradition of the unreliable narrator. It makes it more challenging to write.

A lot of police work is police idle, police baffled, police at breakfast, police at lunch, police drinking coffee - if there is any coffee - and always police staring out of the window, assuming there is one.

truth is rarely the truth and the things you thought weren't true often turn out not to be false.

On the whole it's not wise to remind the devil that he's the devil, especially when we were getting on so well.

Looking at him I felt as if I had just met a powerful gorilla while at the same time being in possession of the world's last banana.

Farraj looked at me with the clinical distaste of a chiropodist regarding a septic toenail.

I was never one for looking at beautiful scenery, and certainly not since 1933; it distracts from the more important and admittedly metropolitan business of keeping an eye out for the Gestapo, which, with my politics, is an ever-present dilemma.

The colonel stood up. "I hope you enjoy your trip to Uruguay. Its government is stable, democratic, and politically mature. There's even a welfare state. Of course, the people are entirely European in origin. I believe they exterminated all the Indians. As a German, you should feel very much at home there.

If I weren't a writer, I think I might have thrown myself more enthusiastically into advertising. But, it's difficult to imagine being a diligent copywriter. It would be quite exasperating for me.

I didn't know you were interested in politics,' I said. 'I'm not,' he said. 'But isn't that how Hitler got elected in the first place: too many people who didn't give a shit who was running the country?

One day I hoped some thoughtful historian would point out the close connection between the Mercedes-Benz motor car and Germany's favorite dictator and that the Lord would find a way to pay these bastards back for their help in bringing the Nazis to power and keeping them there.

All nationalism is based on racism and hate. I'm Scottish; I was born in Scotland, as my parents, as my grandparents.

The most interesting legal philosophy is German, so naturally I went to Germany, particularly to Berlin, quite a bit.

There's a great tradition among the English of writing about Berlin. It's kind of a state of mind, almost. That even translates in terms of music. A lot of people go to Berlin with the idea that it's a state of mind.

There is always a temptation to take things for granted, to get lazy, and to presume that the reader knows more than they do.

In my experience, Corporal, the best police work looks like nothing at all and is always soon forgotten." I

The mark of a writer is to make a story as likely as possible, and I've done my best to deliver authentic atmosphere.

Me and Schopenhauer. Sometimes being German seems to come with some serious disadvantages.

His name was Kurt Waldheim.

Sometimes I think God is just the devil pretending to be nice.

Plato talks about something called anamnesis, which is when something long forgotten comes to the surface of a man's consciousness. Now, I'll admit that just sounds like a fancy word for remembering something, but actually it's more than that because with remembering, it's not necessary to have forgotten anything, which makes for a subtle distinction. That's what cinema does.

that's the thing about urgent paperwork: the longer you leave it the less urgent it becomes.

My only choice was between the disastrous and the unpalatable. A very German choice.

You talk like the Nazis were going to win the election, Bernie."
"I keep hoping they won't. And I keep worrying that they might. But I've got seven loaves and five fishes telling me the republic needs more than just a lucky break this time. If I wasn't a cop, I might believe in miracles. But I am and I don't. In this job you meet the lazy, the stupid, the cruel, and the indifferent. Unfortunately, that's what's called an electorate.

I made an appointment to see him and then ordered another beer. While I was drinking it I did some doodling on a piece of paper, the algebraic kind that you hope will help you think more clearly. When I finished doing that, I was more confused than ever. Algebra was never my strong subject.

A first class professional nutcracker who might have done a job about a week ago; stolen some bells.

She ordered a coffee, and I ordered something I had no interest in drinking, so long as she was around.

She walked toward me, her high heels perforating the polished wooden air of the Richmond's quiet basement like the slow beat of a tall clock.

to per cent I'll see if I can find him for you.' I

After a while, you get tired of being the official Scot and defending everything Scottish.

He was as obsequious as a Japanese ivy plant. Wringing his hands as if he hoped to squeeze the milk of human kindness from his fingernails, ...

Scotland is the only case in the world where the poor part of a territory wants to separate from the rich part. If independence came, one option is to keep the pound as its currency, so that all economic decisions will continue to be taken by the Bank of England.

But in my wretched efforts to stay alive at almost any cost I could still hurt and be hurt in my turn, and as long as death's black barrel organ was playing it seemed I would have to dance to the cheerless, doom-filled tune that was turning inexorably on the drum, like some liveried monkey with a terrified rictus on its face and a tin cup in its hand. That didn't make me unusual; just German.

It was an interesting dilemma and pointed up a real point of difference between Nazism and Communism as forms of government: there was no room for the individual in Soviet Russia; conversely not everything was state-managed in Germany. The Nazis never shot anyone for being stupid, inefficient or just plain unlucky. Generally speaking the Nazis looked for a reason to shoot you, the commies were quite happy to shoot you without any reason at all - but when you're going to be shot, what's the difference?

thought that was the whole idea of the German Reformation. To abolish priestly intercession.

The hardest thing is to write about people. First and foremost, you have to encounter their humanity. That is the only way you can make them live as characters on the page.

As a writer, you rely on whatever makes you up as a person, whether those things are twisted and nasty or otherwise.

It's not easy being the world's policeman. No one thanks you for it.

Sport seems to be much more important to people than politics.

Hmm. That's what I suspected, you mad bastard.

This is the country for cruel experiments - it's where idealists are sent to die, my friend. Killing people who believe in things is our national sport." With

I prefer to write books for children instead of reading them. But I do strongly believe in childhood and in respecting childhood innocence. I don't like books for children that deal with adult themes.

History asks us to imagine ourselves in a period, but it's a very different situation when you're in that period and faced with those situations.

All men come to resemble their fathers. That isn't a tragedy, but you need a hell of a sense of humour to handle it.

I was a member of Corstorphine Library in Edinburgh, and every Friday night, my parents took me there to borrow books. I also used to spend nearly all my pocket money on books.

I always try to find a story in the margins of history, but I don't like to do too much that's improbable.

Youth is no longer wasted on the young because it's wasted on the war instead.

I don't think any of us know how we would react until we were put in a situation where we have to do something bad or do something good. I think I'd like to believe I'd act like a decent human being, but I'm realistic to know I don't know.

I write by hand and then transfer the text onto the computer. I like the process of actually having a pen in my hand. Things flow more easily for me that way.

James Bond was an early favourite, although I didn't understand much of it. I read the Bible a lot, too. You might say that this was my favourite, since I seemed to read it so often.

I will say that anyone who supports Scottish independence should go to Athens. Because nothing works. It is a disaster. It is a ruined, dirty place where people do not have money or future prospects. The day one after independence, Scotland would be worse.

The concierge was a snapper who was over the hill and down a disused mine-shaft. Her hair was every bit as natural as a parade goose-stepping down the Wilhelmstrasse, and she'd evidently been wearing a boxing-glove when she's applied the crimson lipstick to her paperclip of a mouth.

There's something weird about the Scots. We are a troubled, slightly tortured race - the sense of the respectable outward character and, inside, the turmoil of something darker.

I don't much like opera, either. Especially Wagner. There's something about Wagner that's just too piss-German, too fucking Bavarian for a Prussian like me. I like my music to be every bit as vulgar as I am myself. I like a bit of innuendo and stocking-top when a woman's singing a song.

The living always get over the dead. That's what the dead never realize. If ever the dead did come back, they'd only have been sore that somehow you managed to get over their dying at all.

Behind my office, to the south-east, was Police Headquarters, and I imagined all the good hard work that was being done there to crack down on Berlin's crime. Villainies like speaking disrespectfully of the Führer, displaying a 'Sold Out' sign in your butcher's shop window, not giving the Hitler Salute, and homosexuality. That was Berlin under the National Socialist Government: a big, haunted house with dark corners, gloomy staircases, sinister cellars, locked rooms and a whole attic full of poltergeists on the loose, throwing books, banging doors, breaking glass, shouting in the night and generally scaring the owners so badly that there were times when they were ready to sell up and get out. But most of the time they just stopped up their ears, covered their blackened eyes and tried to pretend that there was nothing wrong. Cowed with fear, they spoke very little, ignoring the carpet moving underneath their feet, and their laughter was the thin, nervous kind that always accompanies the boss's little joke.

A man's bookseller should keep his confidence, like his physician. What can become of a world where every man knows what another man reads? Why, sir, books would become like quacks' potions, with every mountebank in the newspapers claiming one volume's superiority over another.

I think John le Carre is, at 77, the greatest living writer alive. He is a master craftsman.

But nothing surprises me now. I've grown used to living in a world that is out of joint, as if it has been struck by an enormous earthquake so that the roads are no longer flat, nor the building straight.

I don't really like heroes who always behave heroically. That's not interesting to me.