The Darkest Evening Quotes

“Vera had never bothered about punctuality unless she was the person doing the waiting.”
― Ann Cleeves, The Darkest Evening

“It gave people the right to pity me. And in my opinion, there is nothing more degrading than pity.”
― Ann Cleeves, The Darkest Evening

“She allowed herself a moment of self-pity, while she thought how different her life would have been if her mother had lived. Because her mother would have loved her, wouldn’t she? Unconditionally. She would have taken her into town and bought her the sort of clothes the other girls wore, had tea ready on the table when she got in from school, taken an interest. All the things that Hector had never managed to do. It occurred to her that with a mother like that, she’d have grown into a different woman. Softer, weaker. Not so good at her job.”
― Ann Cleeves, The Darkest Evening

“winter’s solstice,”
― Ann Cleeves, The Darkest Evening

“He’d already given too much of himself away. I was already on to him. I’ve never believed in happy families.”
― Ann Cleeves, The Darkest Evening

“Holly had saved her life, and Vera had never enjoyed feeling obliged to anyone.”
― Ann Cleeves, The Darkest Evening

“In the Bleak Midwinter’.”
― Ann Cleeves, The Darkest Evening

“How are you?’ But she could tell that he didn’t really want to know. It was a form of greeting; he could just as well have said hello. ‘I’m fine,’ she said.”
― Ann Cleeves, The Darkest Evening

“father loved me, of course, doted on me even, but it was never the same as if I was a boy. I was a kind of indulgence. A boy would have been a responsibility. There would have been expectations – university or the army, then to be trained in the ways of the estate”
― Ann Cleeves, The Darkest Evening

“A skein of geese flew overhead,”
― Ann Cleeves, The Darkest Evening

“My parents had been through a messy divorce. They were both a bit flaky and self-obsessed. It was all shouting and throwing things, and not caring that I was stuck in the middle. I couldn’t see Robert behaving like that. Kindness is very attractive when you’re not used to it.’ ‘But”
― Ann Cleeves, The Darkest Evening

“you have to let go of the guilt. That way lies madness.”
― Ann Cleeves, The Darkest Evening

“Holly wondered if this was some kind of message about the strength and importance of nature,”
― Ann Cleeves, The Darkest Evening

“She said she’d been having problems with Thomas’s dad. He was being a rat and freaking her out big style. I assumed he was ducking out of his responsibilities, that he’d decided he wanted nothing more to do with her and Thomas. That was the impression she gave. I think she must have become dependent on him, since setting up home on her own.’ ‘But Lorna wasn’t so anxious when she arrived here later that Thursday morning?’ ‘No, she said she’d talked him round. It was all okay after all. She thought she must have taken a couple of his comments out of context.’ Olivia looked up. ‘I think he was stringing her along and she was believing what she wanted to believe. We’ve all been there, haven’t we? Even if we know in our hearts that our lover doesn’t care any more, that they’ve moved on, we’re so desperate to be with them that we persuade ourselves that they’re telling the truth. But most of us grow out of that stuff. I thought she was still infatuated and I told her so.”
― Ann Cleeves, The Darkest Evening

“David Almond”
― Ann Cleeves, The Darkest Evening

“Hadrian’s Wall,”
― Ann Cleeves, The Darkest Evening

“Hadrian’s”
― Ann Cleeves, The Darkest Evening

“Everything seemed so compact and simple. So manageable.”
― Ann Cleeves, The Darkest Evening

“When did we all start texting? Joe thought. When did we stop actually speaking to each other?”
― Ann Cleeves, The Darkest Evening

“She turned pale and skinny.’ Jill paused and tried to find the words. ‘Like a ghost. Like she didn’t want anyone to see her, to know she was there.”
― Ann Cleeves, The Darkest Evening

“odious”
― Ann Cleeves, The Darkest Evening

“dour.”
― Ann Cleeves, The Darkest Evening

“ridiculous”
― Ann Cleeves, The Darkest Evening

“Juliet saw Harriet wince, but whether she was offended by the language or anxious that the furniture might not withstand Vera’s weight, it was impossible to tell.”
― Ann Cleeves, The Darkest Evening

“On the doorstep was a woman. Definitely not a late-arriving friend who’d been forgotten. This woman was large and shabby. She wore wellingtons and a knitted hat. She reminded Juliet of the homeless people she encountered occasionally outside Newcastle Central station, wrapped in threadbare blankets, begging. Then there was a flash of recognition. She remembered a funeral. Her great-uncle Hector’s funeral. Hector, her grandfather’s younger brother, a mythical black sheep of whom stories had been told in whispers when she was growing up. It had been a bleak, rainy day and she’d been surrounded by strangers. She’d been sent along to represent their side of the family, because in death Hector could be forgiven. He would no longer be around to cause trouble. ‘Vera, we weren’t expecting you!’ She realized immediately that she’d let dismay creep into her voice.”
― Ann Cleeves, The Darkest Evening

“She didn’t sound scared. Excited, if anything. The invulnerability of the young.”
― Ann Cleeves, The Darkest Evening

“I found her a little irritating – she was one of those rather self-righteous women with a heightened belief in their own moral superiority”
― Ann Cleeves, The Darkest Evening

“It’s just that she always seemed indestructible. I never saw her tired or upset or vulnerable. She was one of those women who can face anything the world has to throw at her.”
― Ann Cleeves, The Darkest Evening

“Guilt always made her ratty.”
― Ann Cleeves, The Darkest Evening

“It seemed to Vera now that the beauty of the eggs, the order, the strange friendships, had been all that had held him together through the depression following her mother’s death. Or maybe he’d just been a selfish bastard, with a weird passion for collecting and owning things that would have been better left in the wild.”
― Ann Cleeves, The Darkest Evening