84K Quotes

“We all knew, of course. Everyone knows, but no one looks. We don’t look because if we look it makes us evil because we aren’t doing something about it, or it makes us sad because we can’t do anything about it, or it proves that we’re monsters when we always thought we were righteous because we won’t do anything about it. Either way, safer not to look.”
― Claire North, 84K

“...if people were scared of you then you were powerful, and if you were powerful, you mattered. Even if you didn't know what mattering was good for.”
― Claire North, 84K

“I have lead a thoroughly despicable life. Or rather... not despicable. My evils have been ordinary evils. My sins against the world are daily, little sins that no one would question. I am a normal man. I am a normal man, and have done no wrong, and there is a place in hell waiting for me.”
― Claire North, 84K

“...the secret to success wasn't about being right, merely about appearing to be more right than everybody else.”
― Claire North, 84K

“... sometimes you wake and you remember that you will be an old, old man and that the one you love will die and you can't work out if they die or you first which would be more scary? Who will be strongest without love, alone, loveless, devoid? What is worse—for you to lose the one you love or for the one you love to be destroyed by losing you?”
― Claire North, 84K

“The least you can ask when your life is about to be ripped apart is to get on with these things, rather than be left in suspense.”
― Claire North, 84K

“Every day in every way we invent new methods for curtailing our own liberty.”
― Claire North, 84K

“A psychic had once attempted to read his aura, and after a period of frowning so intense she started groaning with the effort of her grimace, announced that it was puce.”
― Claire North, 84K

“In the kindness bestowed on others there is a world somewhere where the children will be different from the kids of her days.”
― Claire North, 84K

“The queen says it's good to scream. Good to rage. If you don't get it out of your system then you're not being honest to yourself. You're just pretending that everything is okay. That this... this shit, this nothing-nowhere you've got, this dream that you swallowed whole when you were a kid because dreams weren't for the likes of you... you pretend that's okay. You live your life as a grey one, one of the zeroes who'll die alone begging for Company scraps, because you didn't have the guts to look at yourself and say yes. Yes. This is fucked-up. And no. No. This isn't my fault. This was done to me. The world... did this to me. Accept that, she says, and you have seen the truth of the patty line, and the only thing that is right is the screaming, the raging, the burning and the truth of the flame. And when you've done that, then you can find yourself again, and the quiet place inside that will let you take control.”
― Claire North, 84K

“It's how it happens, of course. The worst of it. Not 'My neighbour has been taken to be burned alive, their house stolen, their children dead, and I am so, so scared to speak of it.' Just 'They went away. Just - away.' And we smile. And everyone else is as scared as we are, and knows what that smile means. Is grateful that you didn't make the terror real. Thankful that you haven't caused a stink. Because it would hurt... someone. Someone who isn't a stranger would get hurt, if we ever managed to speak the truth of things. If we ever had the courage to say what we really think, even if it destroyed who we want the world to think we are. Who it is we think we should be. There would be too much pain. So we say nothing. Things just... trail away into a smile, which everyone understand and doesn't have to mean a thing. We are grateful for that silence, for the thing that can't be expressed. To fill it would be a terrible thing.”
― Claire North, 84K

“Theo said, staring into flames, "There's a place where the words stop. She did this and it was... and then we stop. It was terrible. It was barbaric. It was beautiful. You understand. And we do. We know. Our lives exist in many different, contradictory states, all at once. I am a liar. I am a killer. I am honest. I am fighting for a good cause. I am burning the world. We want things simple, and safe, and when they aren't, when the truth is something complicated, something hard, or scary, we stop. The words run out. Everything becomes...”
― Claire North, 84K

“Did you think that kindness is born of terror?”
― Claire North, 84K

“Even atheists pray when they’re gonna lose a thing they love and know they can’t stop it. It’s the knowing they can’t stop it that makes them do the whispering.”
― Claire North, 84K

“I have led a thoroughly despicable life. Or rather … not despicable. My evils have been ordinary evils. My sins against the world are daily, little sins that no one would question. I am a normal man, and have done no wrong, and there is a place in hell waiting for me.”
― Claire North, 84K

“You just make like a heron and maybe one day you'll catch some fish.
A cormorant can count to seven. Put a ring around its neck and send it catching fish and it will remember that the seventh it catches will be its to feast on.
Owls are actually very stupid birds, but when something moves! That's when evolution does its thing.”
― Claire North, 84K

“You met him and then you ran. Why did you run?"
"Two people chased me. I don't know what else you're meant to do when that happens."
"You could have assumed they were with the authorities."
"I am the authorities, Mr. Markse, and they weren't with me. Given that you managed to work out who I was, why didn't you just arrest me?"
A little shrug. "Because as you say, you are the authorities. Why would I arrest someone who might be on my side?”
― Claire North, 84K

“Running changes the city. Sight and sound blazes into slithering sentience, the river is moving black popping with reflected lights of sodium orange, white, green and yellow. The Thames slurps its way down the thin tidal beach below the high walls of the embankment catching on muddy sand, belching wet gloop, the sky is a brown smear stained with bruised rushing clouds, buses unnaturally slow as they crawl across the Westminster Bridge; the Houses of Parliament are all illuminated acrylic blaze and deep recesses of shadow, strips and nooks of blackness where only the pigeons can penetrate.”
― Claire North, 84K

“A castle on the hill, layers of different worries built into its architecture.”
― Claire North, 84K

“I've always known. No one ever says it. We stop before the hard things. We never finish anything that might matter at all. And you're right. That's how it happens. That's how it always happened.”
― Claire North, 84K

“I made some choices, of course, but they weren't defiant acts of judgement. They were made because the alternatives were significantly worse.”
― Claire North, 84K

“wannabe somebody in a nobody world,”
― Claire North, 84K

“Tell Philip Arnslade that I'm going to blow his fucking brains out. "

"Mr. Arnslade will be most relieved.”
― Claire North, 84K