The Trespasser

by Tana French

By the time Witness Number 6 ordered me to find out why the dole had cut him off, I was ready to tell him it was because he was too stupid to legally qualify as a human being and kick all their arses out onto the street, but my partner does patience better than I do, which is one of the main reasons I keep him around.

Trumplicans are too stupid to legally qualify as human beings. Not a book comment—just personal one.

usual

usual,

It’s not that Steve has no ego—all Ds do—just that his isn’t tied to being Mr. Big Balls all the time. It’s tied to getting stuff done, which is good, and to people liking him, which comes in useful and which I watch like hell.

“Mr. Big Balls”—I love it! Got a few people I will be using it on. :-)

I’ve got no time for women who play games, or for men who play along.

I’ve met people—who play games or play along—of both sexes. I’m with her, though. I neither play nor go along with what someone else wants to play (unless it’s something I’d like.) I’m not a player (pun on purpose.)

Game of Thrones;

Second worst last season for this show. Really sad about it. Ruined the whole show for me. Original “Dexter” ending was numero uno.

If you want to kill someone, have enough respect for my time to make it someone, anyone, other than the most gobsmackingly obvious person in the world.

little snot-drip

You don’t make the Murder Squad without having a world-class gift for finding creative ways to get under someone’s skin and wriggle around in there till they’d rip themselves open to get rid of you; without being ready and happy to do it, even if the witness you’re working on is a devastated kid sobbing her heart out for her da.

It was about the same thing as everything else humans have done to each other since before history began: power. It was about deciding who would be the alpha dogs and who would be at the bottom of the pile.

Succinct explanation for all racism.

I’m amazed this guy manages to get out of bed in the morning without working himself into a panic attack over the chance that he might trip on the bath mat and stab himself through the eye socket with his toothbrush and be left with a permanent twitch that’ll ruin his chances of landing an airplane safely if the pilot has a heart attack and doom hundreds to a fiery death. Normally this shit makes me roll my eyes, but here it’s gonna come in useful, as soon as we’re ready to start pushing.

What-if-maybe crap is for weak people. It belongs to the ones who don’t have the strength to make actual situations go their way, so they have to hide away in daydreams where they can play at controlling what comes next. And that makes them even weaker. Every what-if is a gift to anyone who’s looking for a hold on you, and that means us. If a guy’s whole head is in reality, then reality is the only route we can take to get to him. If he’s letting his mind prance off down dozens of twisty hypothetical fairy tales, every one of those is a crack we can use to prize him open.

I should throw some dinner into me and crash out, but I hate wasting time on sleep even worse than I hate wasting it on food.

Ukrainian superbabes looking for older men down the country, with a view to marriage. All the rest could do with a good kick up the hole and a double shot of self-respect.

I live inside my own skin. Anything that happens outside it doesn’t change who I am.

I figure a drug lord’s fat fingerprint in Aislinn’s bedroom, or even a nice bloodstain on one of Rory’s gloves, would do a lot to put my day on the right track.

wool Fair Isle gloves—seriously—and

Reminds me we both need new ones. 🥰

‘Repost this if you hate cancer’—what the fuck is that supposed to do? If enough people like the post, cancer’ll just take the hint and become extinct?”

Those who’ve had cancer certainly would like this to be possible. But in this case, I’m going with “that would be magical thinking.” Word is that cures for cancer have been developed, but men in black helicopters have arrived wherever it’s shown up, and promptly shut down the developers and the potential cure. People make a ton of money from cancer patients. Goddess knows how they could amass such sums, were cancer to become extinct.

Maybe once in a while it even gets the job done without word getting around and turning you into radioactive waste, and without you spending the rest of your life feeling like a rat.

Maybe if cops were ethical (ha-ha), they wouldn’t need to go up against Internal Affairs, and … maybe … cops would be praised for outing the bent ones, instead of being shamed by their colleagues for being honest. This sounds like Mafia behavior.

I don’t like money enough to sell myself for it, and I don’t like anything enough to tie my life to some scumbag who’s already proven he can’t be trusted.

It’s been a long time since any gaffer made me account for my whereabouts like a fucking kid.

too much nature gives me the creeps—but

LOL

“I’ve made it thirty-two years without giving a shite about other people’s bitching. I think I can manage a while longer.”

Me, 34 years. But it was 2nd grade before I decided if you like me, cheers. If you don’t, I could care less.

If someone rescues you, they own you. Not because you owe them—you can sort that, with enough good favors or bottles of booze dressed up in ribbons. They own you because you’re not the lead in your story any more. You’re the poor struggling loser/helpless damsel/plucky sidekick who was saved from danger/dishonor/humiliation by the brilliant brave compassionate hero/heroine, and they get to decide which, because you’re not the one running this story, not any more.

Our very own Pez machine: push open his mouth and out pops a brand-new story. I roll my eyes.

I’ll have to Google what a “Pez” is, before I continue reading.

we’ll have him pinned down for the kill shot. That feeling, it’s not some bullshit figure of speech. It lives inside you somewhere deeper and older and more real than anything else except sex, and when it comes rising it takes your whole body for its own. It’s a smell of blood raging at the back of your nose, it’s your arm muscle throbbing to let go the bowstring, it’s drums speeding in your ears and a victory roar building at the bottom of your gut. I let myself love that feeling, one last time.

Dozens and dozens of people, they just keep coming, and every single one of their heads is crammed with stories they believe and stories they want to believe and stories someone else has made them believe, and every story is battering against the thin walls of the person’s skull, drilling and gnawing for its chance to escape and attack someone else, bore its way in and feed off that mind too.

You can knock down a genuine belief, if you load up with enough facts that contradict it; but a belief that’s built on nothing except who the person wants to be, nothing can crumble that.

I think we’ve all learned that from the knuckle-dragging idiots who “believe” in Trumpanzee.

All the decisions that make a difference, I’d made them before I was twenty-five—the job, the wife, the neighborhood, having kids. All that was left was for me to sit there and watch them play out. No twists left; no surprises.”

It was me. What I said before: somewhere in there, it started feeling like everything I’d ever do was already set in stone.