Bernie > Bernie's Quotes

“She is drinking peach tea in the plaza and she is too hot because her blue and black checked shirt is for winter not for summer in Andalucía. I think she thinks she’s a cowboy in her work shirt, always alone with no one to look at the mountain horizon at night and say my god those stars.”
― Deborah Levy, Hot Milk

“You never feel more American than when you leave America.”
― David Lebovitz, L'Appart: The Delights and Disasters of Making My Paris Home

“I feel on the verge of a great transformation, which may be as simple as becoming interested in other things.”
― Edward St. Aubyn

“The world makes you, and then you see it through the eyes it gives you.”
― Mischa Berlinski, Peacekeeping

“Wealth lost, something lost; Honor lost, much lost; Courage lost, all lost. German proverb”
― Michael Robotham, Lost

“I had found the apartment in San Telmo with the help of a motherly rental agent in a pink suit who had tried to cheat me on her percentage not once but twice, and reacted with a broad and charming laugh both times I pointed it out, as if we were flirting on a date and I was removing her hand from my thigh.”
― Rosalie Knecht, Who Is Vera Kelly?

“People never remember happiness with the care that they lavish on preserving every detail of their suffering.”
― Edward St. Aubyn

“What is more humiliating than finding the object of your love unworthy?”
― Jeanette Winterson, The Passion

“So, you're the man who can't spell 'fuck.'"
Dorothy Parker to Norman Mailer after publishers had convinced Mailer to replace the word with a euphemism, 'fug,' in his 1948 book, "The Naked and the Dead.”
― Dorothy Parker

“Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the universe.”
― Albert Einstein

“To be curious about a thing you have to find something surprising in it, and I’m afraid that nothing surprises me any more.”
― Siân Busby, A Commonplace Killing

“There's a blast of palpable stupidity that comes from our host, like opening the door of a sauna. The best way to contradict him is to let him speak.”
― Edward St. Aubyn, Some Hope

“At the beginning, there had been talk of using some of her money to start a home for alcoholics. In a sense they had succeeded.”
― Edward St. Aubyn, Never Mind

“No pain is too small if it hurts, but any pain is too big if it's cherished.”
― Edward St. Aubyn

“I was tempted to tell her it was because we were British and actually had a sense of humour, but I try not to be cruel to foreigners, especially when they're that strung out.”
― Ben Aaronovitch, Whispers Under Ground

“As Carrie Fisher once said in a film, everyone thinks they have good taste and a sense of humour.”
― Jane Green, Mr. Maybe

“You had to hand it to her: she was as cool as dammit.”
― Donna Tartt, The Goldfinch

“He was a true voluptuary, in his own modest way, with a voluptuary’s genius for softening the world around him.”
― Suzanne Berne, A Crime in the Neighborhood

“He was a mostly mild man with a weakness for passion, a suburban father burdened with the heart of a Russian hero without any sort of balancing grand intellect or ironic world view. The yearning itself, the recklessness, that’s what lured him.”
― Suzanne Berne, A Crime in the Neighborhood

“He’s a real romantic,” said my mother. “Romantics are usually bastards, in case you haven’t noticed.”
― Suzanne Berne, A Crime in the Neighborhood

“Spécial" is one of those elusive French words that means something (or someone) is...peculiar. The use of it is one of the rare times that the French are noncommittal about their opinions.”
― David Lebovitz, L'Appart: The Delights and Disasters of Making My Paris Home

“People think it's all about misery and desperation and death and all that shite, which is not to be ignored, but what they forget is the pleasure of it. Otherwise we wouldn't do it. After all, we're not fucking stupid. At least, we're not that fucking stupid.”
― Irvine Welsh, Trainspotting

“I did that,” says my memory. “I could not have done that,” says my pride, and remains inexorable. Eventually—​​the memory yields.”
― Michael Robotham, The Suspect

“I think that sometimes you can forget what the truth is if you hear a lie often enough.”
― Michael Robotham, The Suspect

“Even if there were only two men left in the world and both of them saints they wouldn't be happy. One them would be bound to try and improve the other. That is the nature of things.”
― Frank O'Connor

“If I see myself as an unwilling detective with a desire for justice, does that make her illness an unsolved crime? If so, who is the villain and who is the victim? Attempting to decipher her aches and pains, their triggers”
― Deborah Levy, Hot Milk

“Rose rested her pink eyes on my eyes. I removed my gaze like a traitor.”
― Deborah Levy, Hot Milk

“I realized my mother had charm and verve. If I blew on her name, ROSE, the letters would shuffle around and come out as EROS, the god of love, winged but lame.”
― Deborah Levy, Hot Milk

“It was hard to accept that the first man in my life would do things that were to my disadvantage if they were to his advantage. Yet it was a revelation that somehow set me free.”
― Deborah Levy, Hot Milk

“Rain wasn’t quite falling yet, but it had scheduled an appointment.”
― Ian Rankin, Standing in Another Man's Grave