The Long Call Quotes

“lack of faith had little to do with choice. Doubt was a cancer that grew unbidden.”
― Ann Cleeves, The Long Call

“His thoughts were wheeling and dipping like the gulls over the estuary, groping for an explanation, feeling at last he was making sense of what lie behind Walden's death...”
― Ann Cleeves, The Long Call

“her judgement had been spoton.”
― Ann Cleeves, The Long Call

“The road climbed steeply and then they were looking down at the village of Lovacott: a group of houses clustered around a small square, which was hardly more than the main street widened. A shop that seemed to sell everything, a pub. There was nothing picturesque here. No thatch. It would never have featured in an episode of Midsomer Murders.”
― Ann Cleeves, The Long Call

“Matthew found the effect of the room disturbing, overwhelming. He would need to concentrate to think straight here.”
― Ann Cleeves, The Long Call

“incongruous.”
― Ann Cleeves, The Long Call

“Matthew thought for the first time that his father had loved Mary Brownscombe. There might not have been an affair, but there’d been a tenderness in the encounter that had seemed unusual even to a boy. Matthew”
― Ann Cleeves, The Long Call

“albatross. He says he carried guilt round with him like the Ancient Mariner, so he had the tat done to remind him.”
― Ann Cleeves, The Long Call

“Matthew was angry, but he’d learned long ago how to hide his emotions.”
― Ann Cleeves, The Long Call

“diffident”
― Ann Cleeves, The Long Call

“staid.”
― Ann Cleeves, The Long Call

“He felt a ridiculous fizz of resentment, because there was no longer any excuse for his lingering anger.”
― Ann Cleeves, The Long Call

“Gaby Henry has a sharp tongue and I’m not sure I’d be able to live with her. She’s entertaining for an evening but I know she’d exhaust me after a while.”
― Ann Cleeves, The Long Call

“Because he knew it was important for the truth to be told.”
― Ann Cleeves, The Long Call

“I don't hate you. I hate what you've done and what it led to.”
― Ann Cleeves, The Long Call

“She'll hate what's happening now. Missing the routine, her days are Woodyard, Coronation Street on television... (She looked up)... You've got to find her.”
― Ann Cleeves, The Long Call

“(Kate looked up at her, hollowed-eyed. She wouldn't be use to failure) No. He tried to fix it himself. He self-medicated with drink.”
― Ann Cleeves, The Long Call

“The chef was obviously a sociopath.”
― Ann Cleeves, The Long Call

“Hiya... Sorry, it you're selling something, I'm skint. And if you're selling religion, I'm an atheist. The resident God-botherer is out. So, there's nothing for you here.”
― Ann Cleeves, The Long Call

“She was still thinking about Adam, the tight bum in the skinny jeans.”
― Ann Cleeves, The Long Call

“the long call, the cry which always sounded like an inarticulate howl of pain.”
― Ann Cleeves, The Long Call

“Doubt was a cancer that grew unbidden.”
― Ann Cleeves, The Long Call

“grockles”
― Ann Cleeves, The Long Call

“He was a man who’d turned his personal likes and dislikes into a moral code; because he didn’t enjoy spending money in the Woodyard cafe, there was something morally suspect about the people who did. The Brethren had been much the same. Matthew thought they’d created a God in their own image, hard, cold and inflexible.”
― Ann Cleeves, The Long Call

“It was sudden thoughts about the things Maggie would have liked or pieces of gossip that he’d like to pass on that made grief come back and bite him on the bum.”
― Ann Cleeves, The Long Call

“People were always more complex than she realized and she was always too quick to jump to conclusions.”
― Ann Cleeves, The Long Call

“posh grockles organic vegetables.”
― Ann Cleeves, The Long Call

“Here it seemed hope and the possibility of redemption abounded. It made Jen feel like punching someone.”
― Ann Cleeves, The Long Call

“It was an oasis of peace.”
― Ann Cleeves, The Long Call

“And she wasn’t eating anything. Not even a bit of toast or a biscuit. It always seems a waste to me, going out to a cafe, if all you choose is something you could have for much less money at home.”
― Ann Cleeves, The Long Call