The Shadow of William Quest Quotes

“Well, this is a deuce of a place to come,’ said Sergeant Berry, as he and Anders walked through the gates of the cemetery at Kensal Green. ‘I’m never happy in graveyards. Reminds me of how little time we have left. Why did they have to build the place so far out? We’ve been walking for hours. It’s damn near in the countryside!’ ‘And even here the long tentacles of London are stretching,’ said Anders. ‘See those houses they are building over there! The last generation would have known so much of this as farmland, but the inexorable grip of the city is closing round what were once pleasant meadows and woodlands. The place’ll spread over half England before it’s done!”
― John Bainbridge, The Shadow of William Quest

“My clerk will discuss with you the list of new customers in the meantime. These hard times seem very good for business. People always seem to want money…’ ‘The price they pay for living in a mercantile society, sir,’ said Wicks.”
― John Bainbridge, The Shadow of William Quest

“Palmerston gave a wry smile. ‘You may be right, though there would scarce be a politician at Westminster who would not be equally vulnerable. It is the nature of man to be at times…unwise.”
― John Bainbridge, The Shadow of William Quest

“After she had spoken she looked out the window once more. Darkness had fallen and she could see only her own reflection in the glass. The intruder had gone, though she had scarcely noticed him slip away. She looked at herself in the window. Soon there would be no reflection of her anywhere at all.”
― John Bainbridge, The Shadow of William Quest

“These public executions are a positive disgrace.”
― John Bainbridge, The Shadow of William Quest

“A few, more dedicated to public service, in government, in the Cabinet even, stifling yawns as popular opinion forced them into legislating for reforms that they must have hated.”
― John Bainbridge, The Shadow of William Quest

“He turned off the High Street into the court of the George Inn, one of London’s oldest. Its long galleries would have been familiar to Shakespeare, whose plays were Raikes’s one literary indulgence. He had once seen Charles Dickens supping there. Watched him in his dandy clothes being the centre of attention for near an hour. Studied him with contempt, not being able to abide the gross sentimentality of his writings. Raikes had never been able to see what all the fuss was about. The writer had seemed loud and overblown in real life. No doubt the George Inn would feature one day in another of his mawkish volumes.”
― John Bainbridge, The Shadow of William Quest

“Sergeant Berry was never enthusiastic about the countryside. It was far too empty for his liking, too quiet, too open. It needed bricks. Lots of bricks, walls of them, making houses and factories, cluttering up all those wide spaces where the sky was visible.”
― John Bainbridge, The Shadow of William Quest

“Berry, supping the dregs of his tea. ‘Well, not sitting here we won’t. Tomorrow morning you and I will take the railway to Norwich. If I’m wrong, well, I’m wrong,’ said Anders, swigging the awful tea back in one go.”
― John Bainbridge, The Shadow of William Quest

“Sergeant Berry took the kettle from the fire and poured hot water into the tea pot. The tea would be strong. Too strong. Berry came from the North where they seemed to like it that way.”
― John Bainbridge, The Shadow of William Quest

“you know I don’t drink! The route to ruin, that’s what drink is. Haven’t drunk for near twenty years, so don’t think you can tempt me. But I’ll pour you another before I says goodnight, if you care?’ ‘And send me on the route to ruin?’ ‘There’s many a route to ruin, as it says in the Bible. We all have to find our own?”
― John Bainbridge, The Shadow of William Quest

“London life made one lazy, he considered. Unfit for real existence.”
― John Bainbridge, The Shadow of William Quest