The Black-Eyed Blonde Quotes

“I watched her carefully. I can always tell when a man is acting, but with women I’m never sure. “This is a dirty affair,” I said, keeping my voice low and as gentle as I could make it.”
― John Banville, The Black-Eyed Blonde

“Wanting things to make sense and be nice and orderly, we keep making up plots and forcing them on the way things really are. It’s one of our weaknesses, but we cling to it for dear life, since without it there’d be no life at all, dear or otherwise.”
― John Banville, The Black-Eyed Blonde

“You can know something and at the same time not know it. It’s one of the things that help us put up with our lot in life and not go crazy”
― Benjamin Black, The Black-Eyed Blonde

“martes, una de esas tardes de verano en que la Tierra parece haberse detenido. El teléfono, sobre la mesa de mi despacho, tenía”
― Benjamin Black, La rubia de ojos negros

“Yes, I know. The problem is, Mr. Hanson, people tend to have a wrong idea of the police. They go to the movies and see these cops with slouch hats and guns in their hands relentlessly pursuing bad guys. But the fact is, the police want a quiet life just like the rest of us. Mostly their aim is to get things cleared up and squared away, to write a neat report and file it along with stacks and stacks of other neat reports and forget all about it. The bad guys know this and make their arrangements accordingly.”
― Benjamin Black, The Black-Eyed Blonde

“I put my feet up on the desk. I could still see out the window. Why do the lights of the city, seen from a distance, appear to twinkle? When you look at them up close, they have a steady shine. It must have something to with the intervening air, with the millions of minute specks of dust swirling in it, maybe. Everything looks fixed, but it’s not; it’s moving. The desk I was resting my feet on, for instance, wasn’t solid at all but a swarm of particles so small that no human eye will ever be able to see one. The world, when you come down to it, is a scary place. And that’s not even counting the people.”
― Benjamin Black, The Black-Eyed Blonde

“Funny movies are funny only in a full house. When the place is nearly empty, you notice how after every joke there’s a deliberate pause in the action to allow for a wave of laughter from the audience, and since this evening no one was laughing, the whole thing began to seem sad”
― Benjamin Black, The Black-Eyed Blonde

“When will I see you again?” I asked. On these occasions, there’s nothing original to say”
― Benjamin Black, The Black-Eyed Blonde

“You don’t realize how narrow the space you’re living in is until someone else steps inside it”
― Benjamin Black, The Black-Eyed Blonde

“Movie lots are strange places. You feel like you’re in a waking dream, meeting cowboys and showgirls, ape-men and Roman centurions, all of them just walking along like any other bunch of workers on their way to the office or the factory. They looked even stranger than usual today, since most of them had umbrellas up”
― Benjamin Black, The Black-Eyed Blonde