The Hallmarked Man Quotes

“There’s no pride in having what you never worked for. Never let the other chap change your game plan. Stick to your own, and play to your strengths.”
― Robert Galbraith, The Hallmarked Man

“all women know a rape victim, no man knows a rapist”.”
― Robert Galbraith, The Hallmarked Man

“It is the great misfortune of the coward that he sees danger everywhere, and of the snob that he perpetually underestimates those he considers his inferiors.”
― Robert Galbraith, The Hallmarked Man

“To be a proper man meant to be a strong man, an outdoors man, but also a man of principle. It meant lack of bombast, a repudiation of shallowness and a core of quiet self-belief. It meant being slow to anger, but firm in conviction. Polworth, like Strike, had had to take his male role models where he could find them, because neither had a father who qualified as ‘proper’, and both boys had found in Edward Nancarrow a man worthy of admiration and emulation, whose approval meant more than any school teacher’s star and whose rebukes spurred a desire to do better,”
― Robert Galbraith, The Hallmarked Man

“However, they landed without mishap to a round of applause from the passengers, excluding Strike, for whom the forearm-grabbing had been bittersweet, and who’d happily have endured a far rougher descent for prolonged physical contact.”
― Robert Galbraith, The Hallmarked Man

“That men perennially underestimate how many of their fellow men are perverts and predators. You know what they say: “all women know a rape victim, no man knows a rapist”.”
― Robert Galbraith, The Hallmarked Man

“Bloody hell, it’s the opposite of selfish,’ said Strike robustly. ‘If everyone thought properly about having kids before they did it, there’d be a lot fewer fucked-up people in the world.”
― Robert Galbraith, The Hallmarked Man

“How often do you think there’s a murder case where both the killer and his victim were pretending to be someone else?”
― Robert Galbraith, The Hallmarked Man

“Always end the day with a positive thought. No matter how hard things were, tomorrow is a fresh opportunity to make it better.”
― Robert Galbraith, The Hallmarked Man

“Creep into thy narrow bed, Creep, and let no more be said! Vain thy onset! all stands fast. Thou thyself must break at last. Matthew Arnold
The Last Word”
― Robert Galbraith, The Hallmarked Man

“But wherefore be harsh on a single case? After how many modes, this Christmas-Eve, Does the selfsame weary thing take place? The same endeavour to make you believe, And with much the same effect, no more: Each method abundantly convincing, As I say, to those convinced before… Robert Browning
Christmas-Eve”
― Robert Galbraith, The Hallmarked Man

“Blame not thou the faulting light Nor the whispers of the night: Though the whispering night were still, Yet the heart would counsel ill. A. E. Housman”
― Robert Galbraith, The Hallmarked Man

“The deed a man may do on the spur of the moment, when his brain is on fire, is not so readily done when it has to be thought about. John Oxenham
A Maid of the Silver Sea”
― Robert Galbraith, The Hallmarked Man

“The distinguishing characteristics of a Gateshead were an irrational belief, a dislike of common sense questions and an inability to contemplate alternative explanations for their dilemmas.”
― Robert Galbraith, The Hallmarked Man

“Now starting to feel as though some personal devil had decided to devote its day to kicking him repeatedly in the balls,”
― Robert Galbraith, The Hallmarked Man

“A few seconds later, Fiona opened up. From her online research, Robin knew that Freeman was twenty-three. She was a well-built young woman, literally every visible inch of whom had been embellished or enhanced to send one loud, crude signal: long platinum hair and a deep artificial tan; thick eyelash extensions and pointed, neon pink false nails; fake breasts, filler in her lips and cheekbones – even her toes were adorned with rings and nail varnish, and there was a chain tattooed around her right ankle.”
― Robert Galbraith, The Hallmarked Man

“he saw a woman he had no memory of ever meeting: dark, overweight, greasy-skinned, wearing a kind of knee-length silver kaftan that made him think of Bacofoil, and angel earrings that flashed, like Lucy’s antlers.”
― Robert Galbraith, The Hallmarked Man

“PC, selecting Tom Waits’ album Blue Valentine and pressing ‘shuffle’. He always appreciated the blunt solace offered by his gravel-voiced favourite. Waits sang of desperation, drugs and drunkenness, of unmourned deaths and lives spent in poverty and hopelessness; love, to Waits, was generally doomed or dirty, and death came early, randomly and brutally. Strike had discovered the singer for himself in his teens, and found him a blessed antidote to the guitar-driven seventies rock bands his mother played incessantly.”
― Robert Galbraith, The Hallmarked Man

“While enmeshed in the relationship, Strike had never been able to imagine loving another woman as deeply, but since it had ended, he thought of it in terms of a protracted infection he’d finally succeeded in throwing off.”
― Robert Galbraith, The Hallmarked Man

“Strike had often thought Sacha more natural onstage than off. When the cameras were on, or the curtain went up, Sacha perfectly aped genuine human emotion. Offstage he always had a slight air of performing himself, and Strike was currently being given a private performance of Talented Actor, Resting.”
― Robert Galbraith, The Hallmarked Man

“I wouldn’t piss on him if he was on fire,’ said Albie savagely.”
― Robert Galbraith, The Hallmarked Man

“Life, misfortune, isolation, abandonment, poverty, are battle-fields, which have their heroes,—heroes obscure, but sometimes greater than those who become illustrious. Albert Pike
Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Rite of Scottish Freemasonry”
― Robert Galbraith, The Hallmarked Man

“Oh often have I washed and dressed And what’s to show for all my pain? Let me lie abed and rest: Ten thousand times I’ve done my best And all’s to do again. A. E. Housman
XI, Last Poems”
― Robert Galbraith, The Hallmarked Man

“He had nobody but himself to blame for the fact that he’d been forced, in what was likely to be the most auspicious setting for romance he and Robin would ever visit together, to listen to her outline her plans to preserve her eggs for Murphy.”
― Robert Galbraith, The Hallmarked Man

“You’ve led a bloody sheltered life if you think this is foul,’ said Strike, and he left.”
― Robert Galbraith, The Hallmarked Man

“because he’d been an arrogant fuckwit who thought she was there for the taking if he chose…”
― Robert Galbraith, The Hallmarked Man

“because it reminded him of the tedious hours he’d spent in her company, all in the service of two easy fucks, and of his own stupidity.”
― Robert Galbraith, The Hallmarked Man

“speaking with the peculiar, tone deaf intensity of the monomaniac.”
― Robert Galbraith, The Hallmarked Man

“terrible”?”
― Robert Galbraith, The Hallmarked Man

“I’d got him quite drunk,’ Kim added, with another of her little laughs.”
― Robert Galbraith, The Hallmarked Man