Real Tigers Quotes

“as every office worker knows, it’s not the hope that kills you. It’s knowing it’s the hope that kills you that kills you.”
― Mick Herron, Real Tigers

“Like most forms of corruption, it began with men in suits.”
― Mick Herron, Real Tigers

“all the flexibility of a rhinoceros in a corridor.”
― Mick Herron, Real Tigers

“No sober day is wasted.
A familiar thought―it was a bedtime mantra, a grace note on which to end her days. No sober day is wasted, meaning that whatever else she'd done or failed to do on any given day, there was always this achievement to reflect on in the violet hour.”
― Mick Herron, Real Tigers

“The public was like one of those huge Pacific jellyfish; one enormous, pulsating mass of indifference, drifting wherever the current carried it; an organism without a motive, ambition or original sin to call its own, but which somehow believed, in whatever passed for its brain, that it chose its own leaders and had a say in its own destiny.”
― Mick Herron, Real Tigers

“If no sober day was wasted, then nobody could take one from her. Even if today brought a slip, the total would stay the same. All that would happen wag that she would not be adding to it. It was like money in the bank. If you missed a deposit, that didn't mean the sum grew smaller.”
― Mick Herron, Real Tigers

“a thought she'd once had about Lamb was that when they'd pulled the Wall down he'd built himself another, and had been living behind it ever since”
― Mick Herron, Real Tigers

“Nobody left Slough House at the end of a working day feeling like they'd contributed to the security of the nation. They left it feeling like their brains had been fed through a juicer.”
― Mick Herron, Real Tigers

“She’d read a lot of discussions about 9/11, obviously, but contributions from structural engineers had been conspicuous by their absence.”
― Mick Herron, Real Tigers

“Besides, if his party stood for anything, it was for defending the right of the strong to flourish, which meant preventing the weak from taking up unnecessary space.”
― Mick Herron, Real Tigers

“Besides, leaked evidence would have resulted in a whitewash, or a Select Committee Inquiry as they were also known;”
― Mick Herron, Real Tigers

“You either cleaned up other people's messes or you didn't--and that was the class system for you, right there.”
― Mick Herron, Real Tigers

“A birdy tells me you’ve got one of mine in your lock-up.”
“That would be River Cartwright.”
“Yes, but don’t blame me. I think his mother was a hippy.”
“Smoke a lot of dope while he was in the womb, did she? That might explain today’s dipshit behaviour. And I thought he was one of your cleverer boys.”
“Mind like a razor,” Lamb agreed. “Disposable.”
― Mick Herron, Real Tigers

“if an architect ever designed a car park the sight of which lifted the heart, civilisation’s job would be done.”
― Mick Herron, Real Tigers

“That a delicacy for the pampered was acquired through brutality was hardly news. By any civilised standard, it was how luxury ought to be measured—wealth meant nothing if it didn’t create suffering. Because the standard liberal whine that the rich were cushioned from life’s harsh realities was laughable ignorance: the rich created those realities, and made sure they kept on happening. That was what kitchens were for, along with prisons, factories and public transport.”
― Mick Herron, Real Tigers

“The only reason for the absence of a sign requiring entrants to abandon all hope is that, as every office worker knows, it’s not the hope that kills you. It’s knowing it’s the hope that kills you that kills you.”
― Mick Herron, Real Tigers

“Rumpus" was a favourite PJ-word; one he'd employed to describe a recent tabloid splash about his friendship with a lap dancer. It was also a term he'd used in reference to both 9/11 and the global recession.”
― Mick Herron, Real Tigers

“There was always trouble, and he always rose from the resulting miasma looking a lovable scamp: lovable, anyway, to that gratifyingly large sector of the populace to whom he'd always be a figure of fun: breathing a bit of the old jolly into politics, and where's the harm in that, eh? As for those who hated him, they were never going to change their minds, and since he was in a better position to fuck them up than they were him, they didn't give him sleepless nights.”
― Mick Herron, Real Tigers

“belief was not actually about believing; belief was simply somewhere to shelve hope”
― Mick Herron, Real Tigers

“Conspiracy theorists, she knew, were paranoid by definition, and usually with good reason – they were indeed being watched, largely because they were standing on an upturned bucket, haranguing the sheeple about their wingnut delusions.”
― Mick Herron, Real Tigers

“The ghost, instead, hovers on the landing, outside the only door in the building that’s currently closed, and from behind which rumbles something reminiscent of a barnyard presence; the snoring, perhaps, of a discontented pig. Thunder rumbles once more overhead, and has its echo in this upper room, but the thunder is alert and purposeful, while the pig sounds deep in slumber.”
― Mick Herron, Real Tigers

“but as every ghost knows, there are few more complicated creatures than the living.”
― Mick Herron, Real Tigers

“But on the other hand, you could have just given them instructions.’ ‘They haven’t fucking learned to follow instructions.”
― Mick Herron, Real Tigers

“I thought you might be in trouble.’ ‘Yeah. Because crashing a bus would have been a big fucking help if I had been.”
― Mick Herron, Real Tigers

“You could feasibly throw a tennis ball and cover the distance between Slough House and St. Giles Cripplegate, but if you wanted your ball back, it might take a while. For there was no straight route through the Barbican, which resembled an Escher drawing assembled in brick by a spook architect, its primary purpose being not so much to keep you from getting where you were going, but to leave you unsure about where you’d been. Every path led to a junction resembling the one you’d just left, offering routes to nowhere you wanted to go.”
― Mick Herron, Real Tigers

“Marcus remembered a figure on the bridge when he and Shirley went looking for River and found ice creams instead. Probably best not to mention that now, or ever.”
― Mick Herron, Real Tigers

“How long do memories last? This one had been with him half his life, and carried on for what seemed like minutes.”
― Mick Herron, Real Tigers

“And you keep going round the houses. Any chance of getting to the point? I have underlings to bully.”
― Mick Herron, Real Tigers

“In company he claimed they got on like a house on fire, but it was clear which of them provided the petrol.”
― Mick Herron, Real Tigers

“Well, we’re over-worked, under-resourced and under-appreciated. The general mood more or less reflects this.”
― Mick Herron, Real Tigers