The Hanging Garden Quotes

“When we stop believing in God, we don’t suddenly believe in “nothing” … we believe anything.”
― Ian Rankin, The Hanging Garden

“This bleak housing-scheme, designed by sadists who’d never had to live anywhere near it, had a heart which had shrivelled but refused to stop pumping.”
― Ian Rankin, The Hanging Garden

“Strip the veneer, and the world had moved only a couple of steps from the cave.”
― Ian Rankin, The Hanging Garden

“But you used to know a good thing when you saw it.” “Trouble is, that’s never what I see when I look in the mirror.” “What do you see?” He looked at her. “Sometimes I don’t see anything at all.”
― Ian Rankin, The Hanging Garden

“The shelves were bowed under the weight of textbooks. There were old framed prints on the walls, and a blackboard with the single word CHARACTER on it. University paperwork was piled on the window ledge, all but blacking out the bottom two panes. The smell in the room was that of intellect gone awry.”
― Ian Rankin, The Hanging Garden

“Everyone, it seemed to him, lived their lives out of little boxes, opening different ones for different occasions. Nobody ever gave their whole self away. Cops were like that, each box a safety mechanism. Most people you met in the course of your life, you never even learned their names. Everybody was boxed off from everybody else. It was called society.”
― Ian Rankin, The Hanging Garden

“Obsession came easy—especially to men—because it was a cheap way of achieving control, albeit control over something practically worthless.”
― Ian Rankin, The Hanging Garden

“But you used to know a good thing when you saw it.

Trouble is, that’s never what I see when I look in the mirror.

What do you see? He looked at her.

Sometimes I don’t see anything at all.”
― Ian Rankin, The Hanging Garden

“boffins”
― Ian Rankin, The Hanging Garden