Ann > Ann's Quotes

“Wherever there's hope there's a trial.”
― Haruki Murakami, 1Q84

“He knew at once it was a human bone, when he took it from the baby who was sitting on the floor chewing it.”
― Arnaldur Indridason, Silence of the Grave

“But the rain gods went away. They ain’t coming back, either.” “How do you know that?” “They got no reason to. We don’t believe in them no more.”
― James Lee Burke, Rain Gods

“Because that is what your babies do, when they grow. They turn around and say it is all your fault.”
― Anne Enright, The Green Road

“Philosophers have debated the meaning of life for centuries, rarely coming to the same conclusion.”
― Stephen King, Finders Keepers

“An aging beau. He has probably tried to screw half his staff and doubtless attributes to his charm the few successes that are simply statistical anomalies.”
― Pierre Lemaitre, Camille

“charpoy,”
― Amitav Ghosh, Sea of Poppies

“As with all megalomaniacs, he had no handles. He was the type of man the Spanish call sin dios, sin verguenza, without God or shame.”
― James Lee Burke, The New Iberia Blues

“It is no small thing, when they, who are so fresh from God, love us. ”
― Charles Dickens

“Mama,” Lily says. “This is more than I can bear.” She longs to weep, but her tears remain stubbornly locked in her heart. Mama kisses the top of Lily’s head, keeps rocking her, says, “No, child. This is just more than you should have to bear.”
― Jess Montgomery, The Widows

“There’s a thing called narcissistic personality disorder. People who have an inflated sense of their own importance, a lack of empathy for others. They’re vain, they crave the power over others they think they deserve. They can be arrogant and callous. They think they’re better than everybody else and they don’t care who they trample on in their desire to get what they want.’ ‘A bit like Donald Trump, then?”
― Val McDermid, Out of Bounds

“One clue is that in pseudoscience, every piece fits neatly inside a theory and the scientist is never wrong.”
― Nell Freudenberger, Lost and Wanted

“grief is love made homeless,”
― Søren Sveistrup, The Chestnut Man

“I don’t know how it had happened, but Baba’s Norwegian genes had made my Chinese features uncomfortably excessive. My brows arched too high, my nostrils flared too wide, and my lips were pouty and fuller than they needed to be. Even my eyes looked less like Ma’s classic almonds and more like a startled cat.”
― Tori Eldridge, The Ninja Daughter

“They weren’t bad books,” Phin countered patiently. “They were books that you didn’t enjoy. It’s not the same thing at all. The only bad books are books that are so badly written that no one will publish them. Any book that has been published is going to be a ‘good book’ for someone.”
― Lisa Jewell, The Family Upstairs

“It’s impossible to use up cats, they just keep reappearing. Didn’t she have lots of kittens?”
― Christopher Fowler, The Lonely Hour

“Once the queen’s head is severed, he walks away.”
― Hilary Mantel, The Mirror & the Light

“Worse, Donald, who understands nothing about history, constitutional principles, geopolitics, diplomacy (or anything else, really) and was never pressed to demonstrate such knowledge, has evaluated all of this country’s alliances, and all of our social programs, solely through the prism of money, just as his father taught him to do.”
― Mary L. Trump, Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World's Most Dangerous Man

“Anyone, Eliza is thinking, who describes dying as “slipping away” or “peaceful” has never witnessed it happen. Death is violent, death is a struggle. The body clings to life, as ivy to a wall, and will not easily let go, will not surrender its grip without a fight.”
― Maggie O'Farrell, Hamnet

“Mark Shondell could lay no such claim. He sought revenge on others for his own failure, and helped inculcate racial hatred and fear in the electorate to divide us against ourselves. I had known his kind all my life.”
― James Lee Burke, A Private Cathedral

“But I do believe there are people in our midst who wish to make a graveyard of the world, and their motivation may be no more complex than that of an angry child flinging scat because he was left with regularity in a dirty diaper.”
― James Lee Burke, A Private Cathedral

“My experience has been that grief and loss do not necessarily become more acceptable with time, and commitment to them is of no value to either the living or the dead.”
― James Lee Burke, Black Cherry Blues

“Good manners were a part of his inheritance, like left-handedness or hemophilia.”
― John Banville, Snow

“Winston Churchill is said to have once remarked that the strongest argument against democracy is a brief conversation with the average voter.”
― Max Seeck, The Witch Hunter

“When you think of the material God has to work with,” he said, “you have to feel sorry for Him, sometimes.”
― Benjamin Black, Christine Falls

“WRITING A MURDER mystery is like trying to braid a spiderweb, thousands of threads stick to your fingers and break if you don’t keep your focus.”
― Katrine Engberg, The Tenant

“If this isn’t hell, the devil is surely taking notes.”
― Stuart Turton, The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle

“bars can’t build better men and misery can only break what goodness remains”
― Stuart Turton, The 7½ Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle

“They were luxurious eyebrows, still black – although the salt was beginning to win out over the pepper in his hair,”
― Catriona McPherson, The Mirror Dance

“Gilberto handled the drone like his own personal falcon. It did everything but kill a pigeon, land on a treetop and eat the thing for lunch.”
― Joe Ide, Smoke