Robert Galbraith Quotes

He knew more about the death of Lula Landry than he had ever meant or wanted to know; the same would be true of virtually any sentient being in Britain. Bombarded with the story, you grew interested against your will, and before you knew it, you were so well informed, so opinionated about the facts of the case, you would have been unfit to sit on a jury.

There was, she noticed, a fragment of frozen pea caught in the setting of her engagement ring.

untrammelled flow

D'you mind if we get going?' said Strike, checking his watch. 'I told Elin I'll be over tonight.'

'No problem,' said Robin.

Yet for some reason - perhaps due to her headache, perhaps because of the lonely woman sitting in Summerfield among the memories of loved ones who had left her - Robin could easily have wept all over again.

Suicides, in his experience, were perfectly capable of feigning an interest in a future they had no intention of inhabiting.

Matthew kept hinting that Strike was somehow a fake. He seemed to feel that being a private detective was a far-fetched job, like astronaut or lion tamer; that real people did not do such things.

In her experience, men like Geraint were astoundingly prone to believe that their scattergun sexual advances were appreciated and even reciprocated.

Ilsa looked slightly aggrieved at the news that Robin still intended to marry someone other than Strike, but before she could say anything else Strike's mobile buzzed in his pocket.

Strike would have advised any friend to leave and not look back, but he had come to see her like a virus in his blood that he doubted he would ever eradicate; the best he could hope for was to control its symptoms.

In the inverted food chain of fame, it was the big beasts who were stalked and hunted

As always, he found her better-looking in the flesh than in the memory he had of her when not present.

She had drawn strength from everyone else's weakness, hoping that her adrenaline-fueled bravery would carry her safely back to normality,

Neither of them could tell who had made the first move, or whether they acted in unison. They were holding each other tightly before they knew what happened, Robin's chin on Strike's shoulder, his face in her hair. He smelled of sweat, beer and surgical spirits, she, of roses and the faint perfume that he had missed when she was no longer in the office. The feel of her was both new and familiar, as though he had held her a long time ago, as though he had missed it without knowing it for year. Through the closed door upstairs the band playing on:

I'll go wherever you will go
If I could make you mine ...

How could the death of someone you had never met affect you so?

Robin and Matthew had just two months to go before the wedding. There was still time.

The dead girl had her glimpse of earthly paradise: littered with designer goods, and celebrities to sneer at, and handsome drivers to joke with, and the yearning for it had brought her to this: seven mourners, and a minister who did not know her name.

Abused people cling to their abusers.

Yet he liked her face. He liked her voice. He liked being around her.

Charlotte had had the kind of beauty that made men forget themselves midsentence, that stunned them into silence.

R'bin," he said, giving up and gazing down at her. "R'bin, d'you know wadda kairos mo…" He hiccoughed. "Mo…moment is?"

"A kairos moment?" she repeated, hoping against hope it was not something sexual, something that she would not be able to forget afterwards, especially as the kebab shop owner was listening in and smirking behind them. "No, I don't. Shall we go back to the office?"

"You don't know whadditis?" he asked, peering at her.

"No."

" 'SGreek," he told her. "Kairos. Kairos moment. An' it means," and from somewhere in his soused brain he dredged up words of surprising clarity, "the telling moment. The special moment. The supreme moment."

Oh please, thought Robin, please don't tell me we're having one.

"An' d'you know what ours was, R'bin, mine an' Charlotte's?" he said, staring into the middle distance, his unlit cigarette hanging from his hand. "It was when she walk'd into the ward - I was in hosp'tal f'long time an' I hadn' seen her f'two years - no warning - an' I saw her in the door an' ev'ryone turned an' saw her too, an' she walked down the ward an' she never said a word an," he paused to draw breath, and hiccoughed again, "an' she kissed me aft' two years, an' we were back together. Nobody talkin'. Fuckin' beautiful. Mos' beaut'ful woman I've 'ver seen. Bes' moment of the whole fuckin' - 'fmy whole fuckin' life, prob'bly. I'm sorry, R'bin," he added, "f'r sayin' 'fuckin'.' Sorry 'bout that."

Strike had never wanted children; it was one of the things on which he and Charlotte had always agreed, and it had been one of the reasons other relationships over the years had foundered. Lucy deplored his attitude, and the reasons he gave for it; she was always miffed when he stated life aims that differed from hers, as though he were attacking her decisions and choices.

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.

Kairos moment. An' it means," and from somewhere in his soused brain he dredged up words of surprising clarity, "the telling moment. The special moment. The supreme moment.

Holly was playing the concerned relative, the devoted sister, and if it was a ham performance Robin was experienced enough, now, to know that there were usually nuggets of truth to be sifted from even the most obvious dross.

She was black, too, or rather, a delicious shade of café au lait, and this, we were constantly told, represented progression an industry concerned merely with surfaces. (I am dubious: could it not be that, this season, café au lait was the 'in' shade? Have we seen a sudden influx of black women into the industry in Landry's wake? Have our notions of female beauty been revolutionised by her success? Are black Barbies now out-selling white?)

There are always loose ends in real life.

Psychology's loss," said Strike, "is private detection's gain.

Instinct was clawing at him like an importuning dog.

Men looked so tragic when they cried.

When you are young, and beautiful, you can be very cruel.

Many lonely people, Strike knew, found it pleasant to be the focus of somebody's undivided attention and sought to prolong the novel experience.

A marked desire to be considered more than he felt himself to be; to become endowed, in fact, with that unpredictable, dangerous and transformative quality: fame.

She is a woman of an excellent assurance, and an extraordinary happy wit, and tongue. Ben Jonson, Epicoene, or The Silent Woman

He was sorry, genuinely sorry, for the pain she was in. Yet the revelation had caused certain other feelings - feelings he usually kept under tight rein, considering them both misguided and dangerous - to flex inside him, to test their strength against their restraining bonds.

Lined the walls. Didn't he live in St. Michael's Mount, the giant Cormoran?

salacious gossip. The fact that

It's that wounded-poet crap, that soul-pain shit, that too-much-of-a-tortured-genius-to-wash bollocks. Brush your teeth, you little bastard. You're not fucking Byron.

Strike, who had heard the testimony of Brittany Brockbank and Rhona Laing and many others like them, knew that most women's rapists and killers were not strangers in masks who reached out of the dark space under the stairs. They were the father, the husband, the mother's or the sister's boyfriend ...

Christmas," said Robin, with a faint grin but without apology. "I was going to put it up yesterday, but after Leonora was charged I didn't feel very festive. Anyway, I've got you an appointment to see her at six. You'll need to take photo ID - " "Good work, thanks." " - and I got you sandwiches and I thought you might like to see this," she said. "Michael Fancourt's given an interview about Quine." She passed him a pack of cheese and pickle sandwiches and a copy of The Times, folded to the correct page. Strike lowered himself onto the farting leather sofa and ate while reading the article, which was adorned with a split photograph. On the left-hand side was a picture of Fancourt standing in front of an Elizabethan country house. Photographed from below, his head

And that woman was going to marry Matthew! Matthew, who had been banking on her working in human resources, with a nice salary to complement his own, who sulked and bitched about her long, unpredictable hours and her lousy paycheck . . . couldn't she see what a stupid bloody thing she was doing? Why the fuck had she put that ring back on? Hadn't she tasted freedom on that drive up to Barrow, which Strike looked back on with a fondness that discomposed him?

She's making a fucking huge mistake, that's all.

Began to read a piece on how a high street chain of stores had banned Cliff Richard's Christmas songs.

the walking stick, like a burqa, conferred protective status...

I am become a name.

Shoveling food into his mouth. Thoughts came fluently, cogently:

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 nillness."
Nillness, thought Strike, for a second distracted. He had slept badly. Nillness, that was where Lula Landry had gone, and where all of them, he and Rochelle included, were headed. Sometimes illness turned slowly to nillness, as was happening to Bristow's mother ... sometimes nillness rose to meet you out of nowhere, like a concrete road slamming your skull apart.

Who was more conscious than the soldier of capricious fortune, of the random roll of the dice?

Experience had taught Strike that there was a certain type of woman to whom he was unusually attractive. Their common characteristics were intelligence and the flickering intensity of badly wired lamps.

Look me in the eye and tell me you've loved anyone, since, like you loved me."
"No, I haven't," he said, "and thank fuck for that.

Optimumque est, ut volgo dixere, aliena insania frui. And the best plan is, as the popular saying was, to profit by the folly of others. Pliny the Elder, Historia Naturalis

There's nothing of so infinite vexation As man's own thoughts. John Webster, The White Devil

Time had eroded all shock value.

Why do people do this?'
'Blog, you mean? I don't know ... didn't someone once say the unexamined life isn't worth living?'
'Yeah, Plato,' said Strike, 'but this isn't examining a life, it's exhibiting it.

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.

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 ...

For all his determination to keep her at arm's length, they had literally leaned on each other. He could remember exactly what it felt like to have his arm around her waist as they had meandered towards Hazlitt's Hotel. She was tall enough to hold easily. He had never fancied very small women.

Matthew would not like this, she had said.

He would have liked it even less had he known how much Strike had liked it.

Felix qui potuit rerum cognoscere causas. Lucky is he who has been able to understand the causes of things Virgil, Georgics, Book 2

He had never been able to understand the assumption of intimacy fans felt with those they had never met.

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.

You are not writing properly unless someone is bleeding, probably you.

Pretending you're OK when you aren't isn't strength.

Strike knew how deeply ingrained was the belief that the evil conceal their dangerous predilections for violence and domination. When they wear them like bangles for all to see, the gullible populace laughs, calls it a pose, or finds it strangely attractive.

People liked to talk; there were very few exceptions, the question was how you made them do it. Some were amenable to alcohol; others liked a spotlight; and then there were those who merely needed proximity to another conscious human being. A subsection of humanity would become loquacious only on one favorite subject; it might be their own innocence, or somebody else's guilt.

If you spot anything, or you think of anything I haven't, tell me, won't you?" This was rather thrilling: Robin prided herself on her observational powers; they were one reason she had secretly cherished the childhood ambition that the large man beside her was living.

One mellows almost without realizing it's a compensation of age, because anger is exhausting.

Hearing her tell Wardle about the disposable wedding cameras she had ordered had brought home to Strike how soon she would become Mrs. Matthew Cunliffe. There's still time, he thought. For what, he did not specify, even to himself.

The women fell silent with the instinctive courtesy women often show to incapacitated males.

He had called what he felt for Charlotte love and it remained the most profound feeling he had had for any woman. In the pain it had caused him and its lasting after-effects it had more resembled a virus that, even now, he was not He had called what he felt for Charlotte love and it remained the most profound feeling he had had for any woman. In the pain it had caused him and its lasting after-effects it had more resembled a virus that, even now, he was not.

Hesitation was fatal. Choose.

Will you turn on the radio? I fancy a bit of music," she said. "Louder than that, sweetie. Oh, I love this." "Telephone" by Lady Gaga filled the car.

She couldn't understand a vocation. Some people can't; at best, work's about status and pay cheques for them, it hasn't got value in itself.

All love, ultimately, is self-love.

There were friends all over London who would welcome his eagerly to their homes, who would throw open their guest rooms and their fridges, eager to condole and to help. The price of all of those comfortable beds and home-cooked meals, however, would be to sit at kitchen tables, once the clean-pajamaed children were in bed, and relive the filthy final battle with Charlotte, submitting to the outraged sympathy and pity of his friends' girlfriends and wives. To this he preferred grim solitude, a Pot Noodle and a sleeping bag.

They walked fifty yards in silence, and Strike had lit up a cigarette before he said: "Very, very impressive." Robin glowed with pride.

It was difficult for him to decide whether she was sincere, or performing her own character; her beauty got in the way, like a thick cobweb through which it was difficult to see her clearly.

Her antipathy towards Strike seemed to have evaporated. He was not surprised; he had met the phenomenon many times. People liked to talk; there were very few exceptions; the question was how you made them do it. Some, and Ursula was evidently one of them, were amenable to alcohol; others liked a spotlight; and then there were those who merely needed proximity to another conscious human being.

[He] looked as thought he had been carved out of soft ebony by a master hand that had grown bored with its own expertise, and started to veer towards the grotesque.

The feel of her was both new and familiar, as though he had held her a long time ago, as though he had missed it without knowing it for years.

Can I ask who you are, sir?"
"Yeah, I expect so," said Strike, walking past him and ringing the doorbell. Anstis's dinner invitation notwithstanding, he was not feeling sympathetic to the police just now. "Should be just about within your capabilities.

People do kill themselves, you know, Miranda, when they think their whole reason for living is being taken away from them. Even the fact that other people think their suffering is a joke isn't enough to shake them out of it.

Ridiculous," he said breathlessly. "You ought to give up detecting and try fantasy writing.

Robin was disposed to feel desperately sorry for anyone with a less fortunate love life than her own – if desperate pity could describe the exquisite pleasure she actually felt at the thought of her own comparative paradise.

The instantaneous shift from calm to calamity. The slowing of time. Every sense suddenly wire-taut and screaming.

Why the fuck had she put that ring back on? Hadn't she tasted freedom on that drive up to Barrow, which Strike looked back on with a fondness that discomposed him?

She's making a fucking huge mistake, that's all.

That was all. It wasn't personal. Whether she was engaged, married or single, nothing could or ever would come of the weakness he was forced to acknowledge that he had developed.

More pre-Christmas revelers on the Friday-night Tube: girls in ludicrously tiny glittering dresses risking hypothermia for a fumble with the boy from Packaging.

In the depths of his tiredness, surrounded by these blank, sheep-like visages, he found himself pondering the accidents that had brought all of them into being. Every birth was, viewed properly, mere chance. With a hundred million sperm swimming blindly through the darkness, the odds against a person becoming themselves were staggering.

Insouciance, he was edgy. Why didn't he ask why Strike was there? Or did

There were undoubtedly those to whom killing was easy and pleasurable: he had met a few such. Millions had been successfully trained to end others' lives; he, Strike, was one of them. Humans killed opportunistically, for advantage and in defense, discovering in themselves the capacity for bloodshed when no alternative seemed possible; but there were also people who had drawn up short, even under the most intense pressure, unable to press their advantage, to seize the opportunity, to break the final and greatest taboo.

Lightning doesn't strike twice.

A vast unfocused rage rose in her, against men who considered displays of emotion a delicious open door; men who ogled your breasts under the pretense of scanning the wine shelves; men for whom your mere physical presence constituted a lubricious invitation. Her

No matter how many famous people were convicted of rape or murder, still the belief persisted, almost pagan in its intensity: not him. It couldn't be him. He's famous.

I was only going to say that abused people cling to their abusers, don't they? They've been brainwashed to believe there's no alternative. I was the bloody alternative, standing there, right in front of her!

Robin did not know why the announcement that Strike was off to meet Elin should lower her spirits.

It had been, in Robin's view, the most perfect proposal, ever, in the history of matrimony. He had even had a ring in his pocket, which she was now wearing; a sapphire with two diamonds, it fitted perfectly, and all the way into town she kept staring at it on her hand as it rested on her lap. She and Matthew had a story to tell now, a funny family story, the kind you told your children, in which his planning (she loved that he had planned it) went awry, and turned into something spontaneous. She loved the tramps, and the moon, and Matthew, panicky and flustered, on one knee; she loved Eros, and dirty old Piccadilly, and the black cab they had taken home to Clapham. She

She looked away from him, drawing hard on her Rothman's; when her mouth puckered into hard little lines around the cigarette, it looked like a cat's anus.

He just saw her for what she was. She was no good. Some women,' she said, her chest heaving beneath the shapeless raincoat, 'aren't.

I said that the greatest female writers, with almost no exceptions, have been childless. A fact. And I have said that women generally, by virtue of their desire to mother, are incapable of the necessarily single-minded focus anyone must bring to the creation of literature, true literature. I don't retract a word. That is a fact.

Other people his age had houses and washing machines, cars and television sets, furniture and gardens and mountain bikes and lawnmowers: he had four boxes of crap, and a set of matchless memories.

Robin was laughing in the slightly grudging manner of a woman who is entertained, but who wishes, nevertheless, to make it clear that the goal is well defended.

She lay dying, wrapped in invisible robes of martyrdom, presenting her helplessness and passivity to him like adornments, and his dominant feeling was distaste.

were fewer of them in the UK than