Jackie > Jackie's Quotes

“Me, I can’t get to grips with my Inner Life on an empty stomach, and from the way you’re rambling, I reckon you’ve not been eating properly either. All right, don’t look like I’ve just sat on your hamster. There’s definitely something weird about Charley Penn, I’ll give you that. But then I think there’s definitely something weird about Charley Windsor too, and I’m not going after him.”
― Reginald Hill, Dialogues of the Dead

“you’ve got such a talent for being in the wrong place at the wrong time, I bet you were born in a different hospital from the one they took your mother to.”
― Reginald Hill, Born Guilty

“In an emergency some people keep their heads like draught Guinness while others are losing theirs faster than lukewarm lager.”
― Reginald Hill, Born Guilty

“existence was like a huge Persian carpet. Looked at from close up, your little square might just seem a mess, but stand back far enough and you’d see for sure it was all one carefully patterned weave. Trouble was, like a photographer on a cliff, it was hard to get the right focus without falling off. But”
― Reginald Hill, Born Guilty

“Perfection is unnatural, Sergeant, because it implies the absence of either development or decline. Haven’t you noticed it’s the political parties and the religions with the clearest notions of the perfect society that cause the most harm? Once admit the notion of human perfectibility, and the end can be made to justify any amount of pain and suffering along the way.”
― Reginald Hill, Pictures of Perfection

“Either you did things his way now, or you did them his way a little later.”
― Reginald Hill, Pictures of Perfection

“Pascoe meanwhile put his arm around Wield and cried, ‘Oh God, Wieldy, are you all right?’ It was not perhaps the question a man of education in such a circumstance would wish to have asked, but cliché comes in through the french window when deep emotion writes the script.”
― Reginald Hill, Pictures of Perfection

“Now the drift seemed to him like a well-lit road. It was his fate, it seemed, to search for the tunnel at the end of the light.”
― Reginald Hill, Underworld

“That’s right. The Creation. Though if, as one imagines He must have done, the Almighty foresaw what we were going to do with it, can you suggest half a dozen good reasons why He bothered?”
― Reginald Hill, Born Guilty

“We’re all born innocent. It’s getting guilty that makes life worth bothering about.”
― Reginald Hill, Born Guilty

“Unfortunately, parking was bad in Dextergate which had more double yellows than a Bengal tiger.”
― Reginald Hill, Born Guilty

“Butcher, you’re something else,’ said Joe shaking his head in wonderment. ‘You were born knowing things I’ll never find out!’ ‘We’re all born knowing them,’ she said quietly. ‘It’s finding out you know them that takes some folk a long time.”
― Reginald Hill, Born Guilty

“He’d seen so much solid ground dissolve beneath his feet he could have freelanced as an oil drill.”
― Reginald Hill, Killing the Lawyers

“Ram Ray was six foot tall, with silky black moustaches, melting brown eyes, and a sales patter which could sell vealburgers to a vegan. Particularly a female vegan. ‘Fair offer would be you giving me the car plus a monkey for the work I’ve done on it,’ said Joe.”
― Reginald Hill, Killing the Lawyers

“Then the incredible thought occurred to him that this slab of Cambrian rock was actually blushing! It was like dawn on a slag heap.”
― Reginald Hill, Killing the Lawyers

“Joe noted pretended again. Like a lot of people with strong opinions, Mrs Mattison couldn’t really believe any sensible person could disagree with her without some hidden agenda.”
― Reginald Hill, Killing the Lawyers

“The van bore the single word BREAKDOWN like a command, and its engine coughed asthmatically as if eager to obey.”
― Reginald Hill, Singing the Sadness

“That’s right, I’m the driver. I just follow directions. You know so much, why don’t you tell me where to go, Reverend?’ ‘If I wasn’t a man of the cloth, I might just do that, brother,’ thundered Rev. Pot.”
― Reginald Hill, Singing the Sadness

“My gran always said, complaining loses old friends and doesn’t make new,’ she replied.”
― Reginald Hill, Singing the Sadness

“His aunt had antennae like antlers and a sunflower’s objection to being kept in the dark.”
― Reginald Hill, Singing the Sadness

“The first course was a portion of smoked mackerel hardly large enough for a single bite, which was what the Reverend gave it, ramming it down his throat with a bread roll, like a musketeer loading his gun.”
― Reginald Hill, Singing the Sadness

“Joe did not spend a lot of time bemoaning the fact that God, who could easily have created him six foot six, rippling with muscles and coruscating with charisma, had opted instead for five foot five, a sagging waist, and social invisibility except maybe in a convention of white supremacists.”
― Reginald Hill, Singing the Sadness

“Beryl standing a little way back from the tiny circle of canvas, looking up and smiling encouragement. Now that was a real smile, a smile for a man to come home to and wake to and respond to all his life. He yelled back, ‘Will you marry me if I jump?’ She called, ‘Depends on your aim. Now stop messing around, Joe Sixsmith. Jump!”
― Reginald Hill, Singing the Sadness

“He had a quails’-eggs-easy-over-on-cinnamon-toast kind of voice.”
― Reginald Hill, The Roar Of The Butterflies

“(“You mean,” Joe had inquired for the avoidance of doubt, “that the guy these came from was bankrupt?” to which after a little thought Merv had replied, “Well, yeah, I’d guess he is now.”)”
― Reginald Hill, The Roar Of The Butterflies

“Yeah yeah,” said Joe, to whom a veiled threat was like a veiled exotic dancer. While you didn’t know the exact proportions of what you were going to see when the veil came off, you knew you were unlikely to see anything you hadn’t seen before.”
― Reginald Hill, The Roar Of The Butterflies

“Unlike reconstructed Rasselas, every cliché of depressed urban high-rise living could be found on Hermsprong. Crack-houses, corner dealers, lifts that were moving urinals when they moved at all, under-passes that were rats’ alleys where you could lose more than your bones, the highest break-in rate, the lowest clear-up rate, more hoodies than a monastery, and so on, and so on.”
― Reginald Hill, The Roar Of The Butterflies

“The man, who looked like a farmer in every respect except that his expression was happy, said, “Oh yes, another mile or so, and there you are. Lovely day for golf.”
― Reginald Hill, The Roar Of The Butterflies

“Of course these days, when class can be cloned as easy as sheep, anyone could buy the gear and walk the walk and talk the talk. But there’s always a pea under the mattress, and to Joe’s keen eye, where real kiss-my-ass class showed through was in the way your born-to-its sat easy. Folk like him either slumped or, at best, lolled. Somewhere toward the top of the heap you learned the art of reclining gracefully.”
― Reginald Hill, The Roar Of The Butterflies

“Boxers are simple men, a condition refined by frequent blows about the head, and though they are generally indifferent to appeals to their better nature or the higher aesthetic, the one way of catching their interest is to make complimentary remarks about their ring technique.”
― Reginald Hill, The Roar Of The Butterflies