Quite Ugly One Morning Quotes

“Parlabane found the word 'pro-active' enormously useful, as it immediately exposed the speaker as an irredeemable arsehole, whatever previous impression might have been given. Once upon a time, he remembered, people and companies just did things. But that ceased to be impressive enough, and for a while they 'actively' did things. Now they 'pro-actively' did things, but it was still the same bloody things that they were doing when they just plain old did things. Meaningless wank-language.”
― Christopher Brookmyre, Quite Ugly One Morning

“... when they hear hooves they look for zebras instead of horses”
― Christopher Brookmyre, Quite Ugly One Morning

“dawn was thinking about breaking, at the stage where it was rolling about under the sheets after its alarm had gone off, weighing up the pros and cons of getting out of bed.”
― Christopher Brookmyre, Quite Ugly One Morning

“Through the other he could see the hazy, white-topped hills of Fife in the distance, the austere, dark blue calm of the Forth, and the snow-specked slate rooftops of Leith. In between there was a corpse in blood-drenched pyjama trousers, with most of its nose bitten off, two severed fingers stuffed up what remained of its nostrils, the rest of its face a swollen mass of bruising, and a wide gash around half the circumference of its neck. It was lying on the missing door, which sat at thirty degrees to the horizontal, propped up by the twisted metal frame of what had recently been a cheesy smoked-glass coffee table. The blood had run off the door and collected on the polished wood below, and might have lapped its way gently down to meet the postman’s spew if much of it had not drained through a gap in the floorboards, from where it ran along an electrical flex into the main-door flat underneath, dripping off the end of the living room light-fitting. The police would find the unconscious Mrs Angus a few hours later amidst the damp fragments of a broken tea-set, and once revived she would swear never to let her clairvoyant sister-in-law bring the ouija board round again, before phoning a Catholic priest to come out and exorcise the place. And so what if she was C of S, when it came to this sort of thing, nothing less than a Tim would do.”
― Christopher Brookmyre, Quite Ugly One Morning

“The blood had run off the door and collected on the polished wood below, and might have lapped its way gently down to meet the postman’s spew if much of it had not drained through a gap in the floorboards, from where it ran along an electrical flex into the main-door flat underneath, dripping off the end of the living room light-fitting. The police would find the unconscious Mrs Angus a few hours later amidst the damp fragments of a broken tea-set, and once revived she would swear never to let her clairvoyant sister-in-law bring the ouija board round again, before phoning a Catholic priest to come out and exorcise the place. And so what if she was C of S, when it came to this sort of thing, nothing less than a Tim would do.”
― Christopher Brookmyre, Quite Ugly One Morning

“He seemed to combine an air of conscientious honesty with a blatant, mischievous untrustworthiness, and the resultant effect was like hypnosis. He commanded your attention with knowledge and facts, but you felt you couldn’t take your eyes off him anyway because you feared what he might get up to. He dealt in truth like a drug, but you got the impression that he was cutting every score with about ten per cent bullshit.”
― Christopher Brookmyre, Quite Ugly One Morning

“the wider rings of girth were evidence of health, strength and vitality.”
― Christopher Brookmyre, Quite Ugly One Morning