Peter Robinson > Quotes

“The victim was white, in his early thirties, five feet eleven inches tall, ten and a half stone in weight, and in good physical condition. The last part always irritated Banks: how could a corpse ever be in good physical condition ?”
― Peter Robinson, The Hanging Valley

“The only difference was, you could play the music again and again; a life plays only once.”
― Peter Robinson, Before the Poison

“Banks felt more alone and further away for having just talked to Sophia than he had before her call. But it was always like that - the telephone might bring you together for a few moments, but there's nothing like it for emphasising distance.”
― Peter Robinson, All the Colours of Darkness

“But would she ever recover fully inside? How would she handle being alone in the house? Would she ever again be able to hear someone walking up the garden path without that twinge of fear and panic? He didn’t know. The psyche regenerates itself, too, sometimes. We’re often a damn sight more resilient than we’d imagine.”
― Peter Robinson

“I have just finished "All the Colors
of Darkness" 090209”
― Peter Robinson

“Paranoia is a form of awareness.”
― Peter Robinson, Bad Boy

“But he couldn't feel self-pity in the face of the memorial. He hadn't lost nearly enough as these children, who'd lost their homeland and, in many cases,their whole families. Perhaps they had gained something, too, though. They had at least escaped the concentration camps, been taken in by good, caring families, and had grown up to live their lives in relative freedom.”
― Peter Robinson, Strange Affair

“The memories were there, but the string of time that linked them like a pearl necklace was broken.”
― Peter Robinson, Gallows View

“Van Morrison”
― Peter Robinson, Playing With Fire

“He had been working at the wall for too long. Why he bothered the Lord only knew. After all, it went nowhere and closed in nothing. His grandfather had been a master waller in the dale, but the skill had not been passed down the generations. He supposed he liked is for the same reason he liked fishing: mindless relaxation. In an age of totalitarian utilitarianism, Gristhorpe thought, a man needs as much purposeless activity as he can find.”
― Peter Robinson, Wednesday's Child

“Oh, Maureen. Don’t be so naive. Everybody knows what it’s like these days. The authorities bend over backward to help immigrants. You ought to know that, being in nursing. It’s all opportunities for ethnics, not for decent, hardworking white folks.”
― Peter Robinson, Blood At The Root

“ANOTHER TWILIGHT
Allow the point of the Croccodrillo
its hazy cypress trees in profile
Like a rough sketch for the Isle
of the Dead, as seen from yellow
stucco, his Villa Igea where Lawrence
finished "Sons and Lovers," wild thyme
scenting olive-grove grass, crime
scenery come back to more than once.
Again you're mirrored in lake shadow,
a white sail flaking on its turquoise
wavelets, keep awake by traffic noise
Along the Gardesana...and you know
that this beauty's unbearable as before
even if seen from its opposite shore.”
― Peter Robinson

“The Maze, that labyrinth of alleys called ginnels and snickets locally—tiny squares, courtyards, nooks and crannies and small warehouses that had remained unchanged since the eighteenth century.”
― Peter Robinson, Friend Of The Devil

“But what Nev does is he takes these kids’ anger and channels it. He gives them someone to hate. He gives their rage some structure and provides them with real targets rather than nebulous ones. So they end up believing they’re committing theft, assault and vandalism for a good cause. Isn’t that what terrorism is basically all about, anyway? Add a few olde worlde patriotic values, a lot of guff about the ‘true English homeland’ and a bit of green to the mix and it makes them feel like downright responsible and virtuous citizens, the only ones who really care about their country.”
― Peter Robinson, Blood At The Root

“Craig wondered if the landlord knew exactly what was going on up there. If he did, he might not have been so quick to let them use it. On the other hand, the prospect of selling a few extra pints on a slow Monday night might tempt even the best of us to leave our ethics and politics at the door.”
― Peter Robinson, Blood At The Root

“Better by far you should forget and smile / Than that you should remember and be sad.”
― Peter Robinson, Sleeping in the Ground

“he realized with a shock that the loss of innocence never stopped happening, that he was still losing it, that it was like a wound that never healed, and he would probably go on losing it, drop by drop, until the day he died.”
― Peter Robinson, Cold Is The Grave

“There was something in him that always stood apart, that she couldn’t reach and he wouldn’t offer. It wasn’t just the Job and its demands, but something deeper: a central core of loneliness. He had been like that even as a child. An observer. Always on the outside, even when he played with others. As Annie said, it was a part of his nature, and he didn’t think he could change it if he tried.”
― Peter Robinson, In A Dry Season

“Anyway, I thought I might go. You never know, the murderers might turn up to pay their respects, like they do in books.”
― Peter Robinson, Final Account

“They were the sort of walls that hoarded winter and emanated its chill throughout summer.”
― Peter Robinson, When the Music's Over

“Those old songs certainly brought back memories. Why did the past always seem so much brighter than the present? Because he had been more innocent then?”
― Peter Robinson, The Hanging Valley

“certain things, especially education, can cut you off from your roots.”
― Peter Robinson, When the Music's Over

“about Barber and Kelly? Banks couldn’t tell. And if he”
― Peter Robinson, Piece Of My Heart

“Fool, he told himself. He had been looking for Keith Rothwell in Robert Calvert’s flat. But he wasn’t there. He wasn’t anywhere; he was just a slab of chilled meat waiting for a man with his collar on the wrong way around to chant a few meaningless words that might just ease the living’s fear of death until the next time it touched too close to home for comfort.”
― Peter Robinson, Final Account

“The world news had been depressing throughout most of his life, but this past two or three years, it had seemed even more so, with the parade of creepy and dangerous clowns that British and American politics had become, the nuclear threat growing and Russia up to her old habits.”
― Peter Robinson, Careless Love

“Craig laughed.”
― Peter Robinson, Dead Right

“He was at an age when every odd ache or pain brought a little more fear than it had before, when colds lingered and settled on the chest.”
― Peter Robinson, Wednesday's Child

“When it comes right down to it, we fear the unknown more than anything else.”
― Peter Robinson, In A Dry Season

“He watched Clint Eastwood for a while. He had never much enjoyed cop films or cop programs on television, but watching right here and now, he could identify with Dirty Harry tracking down the villains and dealing with them his own way. He had meant what he said to Blackstone. A few minutes alone with Pamela Jeffreys’s attackers and they would know what police brutality was all about.”
― Peter Robinson, Final Account

“lost a bit at a time, over the years; it didn’t just happen overnight. But there were intense experiences, epiphanies of a kind, that brought about quantum leaps.”
― Peter Robinson, Cold Is the Grave