The Bullet That Missed (Thursday Murder Club, #3)

by Richard Osman

“Everything is made up, when you really think about it,”

What was he thinking? That was the one question she knew not to ask a man. They were almost always thinking nothing at all, so were thrown by the question, and felt compelled to make something up.

“Everyone wants to feel special, but nobody wants to feel different,”

There are scars, yes, but that at least means the bleeding has stopped.

“Humans can’t be fixed,” says Ibrahim. “We’re not lawnmowers. I wish we were.”

Very few things are so important you would risk your life for them, but all sorts of things are important enough to risk somebody else’s life.

“If murder were easy, none of us would survive Christmas.”

That’s all it was in the end. People were always trying to tell you something, and all you really had to do was let them.

Jack has made an awful lot of money in his life, but he hasn’t, he realizes, made very many friends. One thing he has come to understand, after a lifetime in crime, is that your henchmen are not real friends.

Most of police work is jotting down numbers.

People drift in and out of your life, and, when you are younger, you know you will see them again. But now every old friend is a miracle.

If life ever seems too complicated, if you think no one can help, sometimes the right person to turn to is an eight-year-old.

But how many “verys” turn “like” into “love”?

“It’s always the people. You can move halfway around the world to find your perfect life, move to Australia if you like, but it always comes down to the people you meet.”