The Smiling Man Quotes

“... she was impossible not to look at, impossible not to love. She moved through the party like an aura, and even the places she’d been and gone from held something of her radiance, her afterglow.”
― Joseph Knox, The Smiling Man

“The missing missing were people who dropped off the face of the earth and kept on going, with no one in their lives who noticed, or no one in their lives who cared. When they were found dead, with no means of identification, it was almost as though they’d been born that way.”
― Joseph Knox, The Smiling Man

“Organized, optimistic people, taking trips. Reluctant, frazzled travellers, following work or family on to the next place. Stiff-limbed rough sleepers trying to look respectable enough to use the toilets, where they’d wash up as much as possible before being moved along. The endless ebb and flow of a major city. And unmistakable in the throng, all of the lovers running away.”
― Joseph Knox, The Smiling Man

“a security uniform, crumpled on the floor, like he’d evaporated while wearing it.”
― Joseph Knox, The Smiling Man

“I waited for my face to warp and alter in the glass but it didn’t change. It had finally settled on a look and, after months of doubt and confusion, I suddenly recognized myself so well. I was my father’s son. The violent man I thought I was pretending to be.”
― Joseph Knox, The Smiling Man

“La ventaja de dejar las anfetaminas, la cocaína y el éxtasis era que beber alcohol casi se convertía en una opción saludable”
― Joseph Knox, Sonrisa mortal

“He sounded like Johnny Rotten giving elocution lessons.”
― Joseph Knox, The Smiling Man

“I just wish I’d been born dead.”
― Joseph Knox, The Smiling Man

“I crossed the road to the home of the neighbour I’d spoken with the previous day. I needed a curtain twitcher.”
― Joseph Knox, The Smiling Man

“One body with no name, and one name with no body.”
― Joseph Knox, The Smiling Man

“Sutty despised the sound of music and had something close to a panic attack if the dial ever turned to it. He preferred talk radio and phone-in shows. Cabbies complaining about asylum seekers. He murmured to himself and nodded along, like it was the latest hit. I’d performed my daily routine of changing all the pre-sets to hip-hop and R’n’B stations, something I’d been doing for so long that he thought there was a ghost in the machine. Then I’d gone to collect him and waited until he turned on the radio. I thought he might throw himself from the car.”
― Joseph Knox, The Smiling Man

“could see the moon in a grubby window, slicing through the sky like a scythe.”
― Joseph Knox, The Smiling Man

“He looked like a stage of evolution we’d had to go through to reach humanity.”
― Joseph Knox, The Smiling Man

“the respectable city-centre workplace you’d expect. A light, open reception area with biometric security measures and ergonomic chairs.”
― Joseph Knox, The Smiling Man

“There was a dull-green sheet drawn over a body and an ageless, pale man standing beside it.”
― Joseph Knox, The Smiling Man

“Because of the light he’d flicked on, that split second he’d held down the switch, he couldn’t see in the dark any more. Instead, a neon imprint of the open-throated woman was burned into his retina, like the first seconds following a camera flash.”
― Joseph Knox, The Smiling Man

“The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám.”
― Joseph Knox, The Smiling Man

“Mr Fucking Brightside,”
― Joseph Knox, The Smiling Man

“the queen is dead.”
― Joseph Knox, The Smiling Man

“Even dealers need to put their kids to bed at night.”
― Joseph Knox, The Smiling Man

“Before you were born,’ she said wearily. ‘Do you remember?’ The boy didn’t move. ‘Well, death’s like that. One minute you are and the next minute you’re not. Everything goes black.”
― Joseph Knox, The Smiling Man

“When I had these thoughts I sped up, attempted impossible manoeuvres and hairpin turns. I raced towards buildings with my eyes closed and didn’t stop until the last possible second. By the time I arrived back into the Northern Quarter I was shivering, and I could barely feel my arms and legs. The night had passed and the morning commute had begun.”
― Joseph Knox, The Smiling Man

“I wound down all the windows, flicked on the sirens and tore through empty streets for an hour or so, blasting Sutty’s clinical stink out of the car, the cobwebs out of my head. The sudden exhilaration was something close to a high, and I ached for the days when I could have swallowed this feeling in a pill or snorted it off the back of my hand.”
― Joseph Knox, The Smiling Man

“the gin blossoms, blooming in his cheeks.”
― Joseph Knox, The Smiling Man

“We’re lost,’ she said. ‘We’re here,’ Bateman replied. They were both right.”
― Joseph Knox, The Smiling Man

“a frail, nicotine-stained man”
― Joseph Knox, The Smiling Man

“Whether I give you a slap on the wrist or a decade in Strangeways, I will never think of you again.”
― Joseph Knox, The Smiling Man

“their fists wrapped around pint glasses of piss-yellow lager.”
― Joseph Knox, The Smiling Man

“One benefit of quitting speed, cocaine and ecstasy was that it made drinking feel like a health choice.”
― Joseph Knox, The Smiling Man

“This was the police force now. A fucking infinity of Daves.”
― Joseph Knox, The Smiling Man