Slow Horses Quotes

“Lamb said, ‘If you had issues with him, I could have spoken to HR. Arranged an intervention.’ He tapped Moody’s shoulder with his foot. ‘Breaking his neck without going through your line manager, that shit stays on your record.”
― Mick Herron, Slow Horses

“If Moscow rules meant watch your back, London rules meant cover your arse. Moscow rules had been written on the streets, but London rules were devised in the corridors of Westminster, and the short version read: someone always pays. Make sure it isn’t you. Nobody knew that better than Jackson Lamb. And nobody played it better than Di Taverner.”
― Mick Herron, Slow Horses

“This was the blissful break when the world seemed a safer place, between the end of the Cold War and about ten minutes later.”
― Mick Herron, Slow Horses

“How's your career looking?'
'Well, I don't have an arse two inches in front of my nose, so my view beats yours.”
― Mick Herron, Slow Horses

“Fear lives in the guts. That’s where it makes its home. It moves in, shifts stuff around; empties a space for itself—it likes the echoes its wingbeats make. It likes the smell of its own farts.”
― Mick Herron, Slow Horses

“But the first bedtime story he ever did read me was Kim.' River could tell she recognised the title, so didn't elaborate. 'After that, well, Conrad, Greene. Somerset Maugham.'
'Ashenden.'
'You get the picture. For my twelfth birthday, he bought me le Carré's collected works. I can still remember what he said about them.'
They're made up. But that doesn't mean they're not true.”
― Mick Herron, Slow Horses

“He and I, we're friends. Does that sound odd? Me, friends with a pinko journalist?'
Nothing sounded odd to Lamb; except, perhaps, that people had friends.”
― Mick Herron, Slow Horses

“He has the people skills of a natterjack toad, but he knows his way round the ether.”
― Mick Herron, Slow Horses

“Why am I telling you this?'
'So you'll have an excuse to kill me?'
'That's probably it.”
― Mick Herron, Slow Horses

“Half of the future is buried in the past. That was the prevailing Service culture.”
― Mick Herron, Slow Horses

“God,’ said Jackson Lamb. ‘Is it me, or did all the fun go out of everything round about 1979?”
― Mick Herron, Slow Horses

“Everyone wanted a life less ordinary. And only a tiny minority ever got it, and even they probably didn’t appreciate it much.”
― Mick Herron, Slow Horses

“Catherine said, "There's something I don't get."

Ho waited.

"You're telling us you've got friends?”
― Mick Herron, Slow Horses

“there was nobody to tell her she was lovely any more, and it was doubtful they’d say so if there were. The scary moments had won. Which sounded like a definition of ageing, to Catherine. The scary moments had won.”
― Mick Herron, Slow Horses

“To pass for real in the world of the web she’d had to forget everything she’d ever known about grammar, wit, spelling, manners and literary criticism.”
― Mick Herron, Slow Horses

“And even if she does, she might end up with the life choices of a carrot.”
― Mick Herron, Slow Horses

“For a tiny moment it felt good to have something to blame for all this, even if what he was blaming was the internet, which could never be made to care.”
― Mick Herron, Slow Horses

“If words meant different things to different people, how could they be trusted?”
― Mick Herron, Slow Horses

“He hated that upward inflection. How did the young let each other know when an answer was required?”
― Mick Herron, Slow Horses

“​This is how River Cartwright slipped off the fast track and joined the slow horses.”
― Mick Herron, Slow Horses

“That was the true purpose of Slough House. It was a way of losing people without having to get rid of them, sidestepping legal hassle and tribunal threats.”
― Mick Herron, Slow Horses

“He tapped Moody’s shoulder with his foot. ‘Breaking his neck without going through your line manager, that shit stays on your record.”
― Mick Herron, Slow Horses

“that the yellow isn’t yellow at all, but white exhausted by stale breath and tobacco, by pot-noodle fumes and overcoats left to dry on radiators; and that the grey isn’t grey but black with the stuffing knocked out of it. But”
― Mick Herron, Slow Horses

“Everyone needs somewhere where the doors will always open.”
― Mick Herron, Slow Horses

“Her voice had settled into that pattern people fall into when they know they’ll not be interrupted; when a tale they’ve rehearsed in their head is finding an audience.”
― Mick Herron, Slow Horses

“But there was nobody to tell her she was lovely any more, and it was doubtful they’d say so if there were. The scary moments had won. Which sounded like a definition of ageing, to Catherine. The scary moments had won.”
― Mick Herron, Slow Horses

“so he was mostly unemployed, but he did a weekly off-the-books stint as an exit-coordinator at a club, what used to be called bouncing.”
― Mick Herron, Slow Horses

“This thing couldn’t have fallen apart faster if you’d bought it at Ikea,”
― Mick Herron, Slow Horses

“At length, the traffic lights change. The bus coughs into movement, and trundles on its way to St. Paul’s. And in her last few seconds of viewing, our upstairs passenger might wonder what it’s like, working in these offices; might even conjure a brief fantasy in which the building, instead of a faltering legal practice, becomes an overhead dungeon to which the failures of some larger service are consigned as punishment: for crimes of drugs and drunkenness and lechery; of politics and betrayal; of unhappiness and doubt; and of the unforgivable carelessness of allowing a man on a tube platform to detonate himself, killing or maiming an estimated 120 people and causing £30m worth of actual damage, along with a projected £2.5 billion in lost tourist revenue—becomes, in effect, an administrative oubliette where, alongside a pre-digital overflow of paperwork, a post-useful crew of misfits can be stored and left to gather dust.”
― Mick Herron, Slow Horses

“For my twelfth birthday, he bought me le Carré’s collected works. I can still remember what he said about them.” They’re made up. But that doesn’t mean they’re not true.”
― Mick Herron, Slow Horses