Talking to the Dead Quotes

“...if it's cool you're after, then you're knock-knock-knocking on the wrong door. My maximum ambition is to make it to normal.”
― Harry Bingham, Talking to the Dead

“It’s no good living in a world at peace if your own head is at war with itself.”
― Harry Bingham, Talking to the Dead

“These are tears and I am crying.
It is not a painful sensation, as I always thought it must be. It feels like the purest expression of feeling that it is possible to have. And the feeling mixes everything up together. Happiness. Sadness. Relief. Sorrow. Love. A mixture if things no psychiatrist ever felt. It is the most wonderful mixture in the world.”
― Harry Bingham, Talking to the Dead

“I'm not good with hospitals. The endless buildings, trees dotted around like apologies, and inside, it's job functions you can't understand and that air of incomprehensible busyness. Curtained-off beds and death settling like falling snow.”
― Harry Bingham, Talking to the Dead

“it’s an all-hands-on-deck affair.’ ‘And he wants my hand on his deck.’ ‘He does indeed.”
― Harry Bingham, Talking to the Dead

“Dreams?’ ‘I never dream.’ And that’s true. I never dream except sometimes when I wake up in blank terror and have no idea what I am terrified of. Nights with gaping horror in the middle of them and no reason why. A skull grinning in the dark. Nights when I have all too little difficulty in identifying my emotions. ‘Fear? You get frightened sometimes”
― Harry Bingham, Talking to the Dead

“but silence is frightening to the frightened,”
― Harry Bingham, Talking to the Dead

“Neither of us say anything. She doesn’t need a doctor or a couple of intrusive coppers. She needs a time machine. She needs to go back to the age of eight or nine, or earlier. Back to being a newborn. She needs different parents, a different upbringing, a different past. She needs to be on a completely different planet in a completely different life. No matter which way you read the signs on this one, she’s riding hard for an unhappy ending. Through the wall, we can hear Jane on the”
― Harry Bingham, Talking to the Dead

“A lot of heroin overdose isn’t overdose at all. It’s the same dose as normal, but taken in an unfamiliar setting, it overrides the body’s homeostatic”
― Harry Bingham, Talking to the Dead

“There are only two ways a person can die. Their heart or their lungs.”
― Harry Bingham, Talking to the Dead

“Famous for my ignorance, me.”
― Harry Bingham, Talking to the Dead

“I get up and stare out at the place where I live. I’m right at the heart of Planet Normal. Its strangest resident maybe, but I don’t care about that. I like a place where dads go to work in the mornings and people grumble when the post is late. If Rattigan’s army of the undead is out there waiting for me, they’re well disguised. There are some clouds dotting the sky. Those high stately ones that look like ships sailing in from the west. There aren’t many of them, though, and the sun is already well into its stride. It’s going to be hot. Drift downstairs. Eat a nectarine straight from the fridge. Make tea. Eat something else, because we citizens of Planet Normal don’t get by on a single nectarine. I unlock my garden shed and open a window in there, because if it’s hot outside, the shed can get boiling. It’ll be too hot even with the window open, but I lock up all the same. I always do. I’d intended to shower and stuff, but I did all that last night and I’ve already let too much time drift by to do it all again now. Sharp means sharp, now, Griffiths. Apart from sniffing my wrists to make sure they don’t smell of the firing range, I do as little as I can. But I have to get dressed. That’s easy, normally. Select a bland, appropriate outfit from the array of bland, appropriate outfits I have in my wardrobe. I used to own almost nothing that wasn’t black, navy, tan, white, charcoal or a pink so muted that you might as well call it beige. I never thought those colours suited me particularly. I didn’t have an opinion on the subject. It was just a question of following the golden rule: observe what others do, then follow suit. A palette of muted classic colours seemed like the safest way to achieve the right effect. Since Kay turned fourteen or fifteen, however, she’s campaigned to get me to liven up my wardrobe. It’s still hardly vibrating with life. It still looks something like an exhibition of Next office wear, 2004‒10. All the same, I have options now that I wouldn’t have had a few years back. And today I’ll be seeing Dave Brydon. He’ll be seeing me. I want his eyes on me, and I want his eyes to be hungry ones, sexed up and passionate. I”
― Harry Bingham, Talking to the Dead

“Yes, sir. I went downstairs to' - a blurry moment when no words come to me, then it passes and I continue - 'to pursue my investigations further. I sought to liberate the women I found, but they were secured with chains.'

Jackson nods. I'm doing well. 'And you weren't able to call for help, because...'

'Because of the women on the boat. If Sikorsky's men had heard police sirens, the women could have been tossed overboard immediately. I had to let those men come to me, so I could...um...'

Shoot the fuckers.

'Arrest them,' says Jackson.

'Exactly. So I could arrest them.”
― Harry Bingham, Talking to the Dead

“I envy her her tears. I wonder what they feel like. I wonder if they hurt.”
― Harry Bingham, Talking to the Dead

“I've got a stack of various tedious paperwork-type jobs to do, but few of them are urgent. Over the other side of the office, a couple of DCs are making piles of empty coffee cups and trying to knock them over by throwing a soft indoor rugby ball at them. There are yells of laughter when they succeed, more yells when they fail. I sometimes think it must be a lot easier to be a man.”
― Harry Bingham, Talking to the Dead

“There was a posh girl in my year at Cambridge, also a philosopher, who gave names to every significant possession in her life. She had a teddy bear, of course, but her car had a name too. So did her phone. So did both of her laptops and her camera. For all I know, she gave names to her knives and forks as well - I don't know how far these things go with the English aristocracy.”
― Harry Bingham, Talking to the Dead

“Did your mam get those tulips? I sent them. I felt bad.'

'Yes, she did. Thank you for that.'

'OK...' Don't know how to answer that. I stole his phone. He hit me. I bought his mam tulips. It's hard to work out who owes whom exactly.”
― Harry Bingham, Talking to the Dead

“Fi. That's 'if' backwards.

Griffiths. Nice ordinary name, but two more 'if's lurking at the heart of it. My name, literally, is as iffy as you can get. The only solid sound, the only one you can actually hang on to, is that opening G, and it's not to be trusted.”
― Harry Bingham, Talking to the Dead

“Thanks, Fi. Well, you've really freed up my evening.' He doesn't sound completely thrilled.

'Good. I was hoping I could drop by, maybe. But I didn't want to watch Morse.'

'Whereabouts are you?'

'Peering in through your front window. Is that a new sofa?”
― Harry Bingham, Talking to the Dead

“I don't know what the point of mirrors is. They tell you what you already know.”
― Harry Bingham, Talking to the Dead

“He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone.”
― Harry Bingham, Talking to the Dead

“wonder”
― Harry Bingham, Talking to the Dead

“It's worse than I'd thought. I'm not just in a horror movie, I'm a dwarf in a horror movie.”
― Harry Bingham, Talking to the Dead