Eight Perfect Murders Quotes

“Books are time travel. True readers all know this. But books don’t just take you back to the time in which they were written; they can take you back to different versions of yourself.”
― Peter Swanson, Eight Perfect Murders

“I’ve always felt that being with people, as opposed to being alone, can make you feel loneliness more acutely.”
― Peter Swanson, Eight Perfect Murders

“The thing is, and maybe I’m biased by all those years I’ve spent in fictional realms built on deceit, I don’t trust narrators any more than I trust the actual people in my life. We never get the whole truth, not from anybody. When we first meet someone, before words are ever spoken, there are already lies and half-truths. The clothes we wear cover the truth of our bodies. But they also present who we want to be to the world. They are fabrications, figuratively and literally.”
― Peter Swanson, Eight Perfect Murders

“If I had reasons to love you, then there’d be reasons for me to not love you”
― Peter Swanson, Eight Perfect Murders

“Being an avid mystery reader as an adolescent does not prepare you for real life. I truly imagined that my adult existence would be far more booklike than it turned out to be. I thought, for example, that there would be several moments in which I got into a cab to follow someone. I thought I'd attend far more readings of someone's will, and that I'd need to know how to pick a lock, and that any time I went on vacation (especially to old creaky inns or rented lake houses) something mysterious would happen. I thought train rides would inevitably involve a murder, that sinister occurrences would plague wedding weekends, and that old friends would constantly be getting in touch to ask for help, to tell me that their lives were in danger. I even thought quicksand would be an issue.”
― Peter Swanson, Eight Perfect Murders

“She rarely talked, and when she did, it was only about books.”
― Peter Swanson, Eight Perfect Murders

“If you are still alive when you read this, close your eyes. I am under their lids, growing black.”
― Peter Swanson, Eight Perfect Murders

“I'd like to say something here about how I'll be with Claire again soon, but I don't believe any of that nonsense. When we die, we become nothing. The same nothing we were before we were born, but of course this time that nothingness is forever.”
― Peter Swanson, Eight Perfect Murders

“Her life was messy, but the most important thing for her was to avoid confrontation, to not upset people, to take on all the blame herself. Hurting herself was fine, but she would go out of her way to not hurt anyone else.”
― Peter Swanson, Eight Perfect Murders

“The Sittaford Mystery (1931) by Agatha Christie The Nine Tailors (1934) by Dorothy L. Sayers The Corpse in the Snowman (1941) by Nicholas Blake Tied Up in Tinsel (1972) by Ngaio Marsh The Shining (1977) by Stephen King Gorky Park (1981) by Martin Cruz Smith Smilla’s Sense of Snow (1992) by Peter Høeg A Simple Plan (1993) by Scott Smith The Ice Harvest (2000) by Scott Phillips Raven Black (2006) by Ann Cleeves”
― Peter Swanson, Eight Perfect Murders

“And, honestly, I’m not young, but what is that word they condescendingly use for old people when they can get around on their own two feet?” “Spry,” I said.”
― Peter Swanson, Eight Perfect Murders

“Not even a married couple that have been together for fifty years. You think they know what each other’s thinking? They don’t. None of us know shit.”
― Peter Swanson, Eight Perfect Murders

“It was The Cuckoo’s Calling by Robert Galbraith, who not so long ago had been revealed to actually be J. K. Rowling.”
― Peter Swanson, Eight Perfect Murders

“I read the first paragraph, its words hauntingly familiar. Books are time travel. True readers all know this. But books don’t just take you back to the time in which they were written; they can take you back to different versions of yourself.”
― Peter Swanson, Eight Perfect Murders

“I used to think this trait of hers—the way she owned her failings—was a good thing, but now I’m not so sure. Her life was messy, but the most important thing for her was to avoid confrontation, to not upset people, to take on all the blame herself. Hurting herself was fine, but she would go out of her way to not hurt anyone else. It was her prime directive, the need to avoid collisions. To avoid letting other people take care of her. It’s my fucking mess.”
― Peter Swanson, Eight Perfect Murders

“I ran my thumb along the edge of the book, riffling the pages, and that musty, prickly smell of an old paperback reached my nostrils. I’ve always loved that smell, even though the book collector side of me knew that it was a sign of a book that had been improperly maintained over the years,”
― Peter Swanson, Eight Perfect Murders

“It was where my mind almost always went, to books and movies. It had been that way since I first began to read.”
― Peter Swanson, Eight Perfect Murders

“Winter Nightfall,” of course, by Sir John Squire, “Aubade” by Philip Larkin, “Crossing the Water” by Sylvia Plath, and at least half the stanzas from “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard” by Thomas Gray.”
― Peter Swanson, Eight Perfect Murders

“— Por que você me ama?
— Não sei dizer — respondi. — Eu apenas amo.
— Você deve ter uma razão.
— Se eu tivesse razões para amar você, então, teria razões para não amá-la.”
― Peter Swanson, Eight Perfect Murders

“Books are time travel. True readers all know this. But books don’t just take you back to the time in which they were written; they can take you back to different versions of yourself”
― Peter Swanson, Eight Perfect Murders

“Les livres sont comme un voyage dans le temps. Tous les vrais lecteurs savent cela. Mais ils ne vous ramènent pas seulement à l'époque où ils ont été écrits, ils peuvent aussi vous ramener à d'autres versions de vous-même.”
― Peter Swanson, Huit crimes parfaits

“All poems- all works of art, really, seem like cries of help to me, but especially poetry. When they are good, and I do believe there are very few good poems, reading them is like having a long-dead stranger whisper in your ear, trying to be heard.”
― Peter Swanson, Eight Perfect Murders

“It was extremely probable, no doubt, that the missing man had shot the dead man. But it was more than extremely probable, it was almost certain that the Inspector would start with the idea that this extremely probable solution was the one true solution, and that, in consequence, he would be less disposed to consider without prejudice any other solution.”
― Peter Swanson, Eight Perfect Murders

“Didn’t feel a thing except the remainder of my pride leaving my body. But, apparently, it’s broken in two places, and you’d be surprised how hard it is to be a one-handed drunk at my age.”
― Peter Swanson, Eight Perfect Murders