How the Dead Speak Quotes

“Sophie; there was space”
― Val McDermid, How the Dead Speak

“taking a delicious pleasure in the knowledge that she’d never be stupid enough to spend £700 on a handbag or a pen.”
― Val McDermid, How The Dead Speak

“It looked like speed-dating for the dysfunctional.”
― Val McDermid, How The Dead Speak

“Oh, for that first hit of the day, the blessed nicotine hitting the bloodstream and snapping the synapses to attention.”
― Val McDermid, How The Dead Speak

“Nuns don’t lie. We simply train ourselves to forget that which we are not supposed to know.”
― Val McDermid, How The Dead Speak

“shriven.”
― Val McDermid, How The Dead Speak

“Jóhannsson”
― Val McDermid, How The Dead Speak

“You respect yourself, it makes it harder for others to disrespect you.”
― Val McDermid, How The Dead Speak

“As he often did, he remembered reading the opening of Raymond Chandler’s The Big Sleep, where Philip Marlowe itemises his smartest outfit then observes, ‘I was neat, clean, shaved and sober, and I didn’t care who knew it. I was everything the well-dressed private detective ought to be. I was calling on four million dollars.”
― Val McDermid, How The Dead Speak

“How did these nuns end up with such grand accommodation? Last he’d heard, they were supposed to be all about poverty, chastity and obedience. Still, as Meatloaf pointed out, two out of three ain’t bad.”
― Val McDermid, How The Dead Speak

“We talk about ‘gut instinct’ or ‘feminine intuition’ and often dismiss them. We say they’re unscientific, they’re not something you can take into the witness box and make a case out of. But more often than not, these hunches are reliable indicators. They’re conclusions we draw based on experience, readings of human behaviour we trust because we’ve seen them before. Of course prejudice can creep in and skew our responses, but we shouldn’t ignore those moments when our hackles rise or our spines shiver. They’re just as valuable as those moments of instant attraction that so often lead us into love affairs …”
― Val McDermid, How The Dead Speak

“Years ago, I had a conversation with an actor who maintained, ‘Once you can fake sincerity, you can achieve anything.’ Even when I had no respect for the people I was dealing with, it was important to behave as if I did.”
― Val McDermid, How The Dead Speak

“The key to our present behaviour lies in our past.”
― Val McDermid, How The Dead Speak

“finally to have a sex life, even if it was deeper in the closet than Narnia.”
― Val McDermid, How The Dead Speak

“One of the hardest things we have to do is learn to take responsibility for our own actions. Trying to sidestep actions that deep down we know are shameful is a powerful instinct. From Reading Crimes by DR TONY HILL”
― Val McDermid, How The Dead Speak

“You’ve got four organs of perception and observation – two eyes and two ears – and one for interrogation. You usually learn least by using your mouth.”
― Val McDermid, How The Dead Speak

“Although narcissists can appear charismatic, that charm is always and only exercised in the service of their own greater glory. They disregard the feelings and the interests of others and are often skilled at manipulating them into providing what the narcissist wants right here, right now. From Reading Crimes by DR TONY HILL”
― Val McDermid, How The Dead Speak

“As the poet Philip Larkin famously said, ‘They fuck you up, your mum and dad.’ Sometimes, it only takes one of them.”
― Val McDermid, How The Dead Speak