The Stranger Times Quotes

“The key to life,’ said Banecroft, ‘is looking and acting like you know exactly what you are doing at all times. Margaret Thatcher said that.’ ‘Did she really?’ He turned and raised an eyebrow. ‘No, but thank you for having proved my point.”
― C.K. McDonnell, The Stranger Times

“Mrs Harnforth spoke as if addressing the room rather than any one individual. ‘Who was it that said sarcasm is the lowest form of wit?’ ‘I don’t know,’ replied Banecroft, ‘but I guarantee they’d not seen the internet before they said it.”
― C.K. McDonnell, The Stranger Times

“Fifteen per cent of people meet their future partners at work. I read that in a magazine.’ ‘He arrested me.’ ‘Nineteen per cent of people have used handcuffs at some point in their relationship. I read that in a slightly less God-fearing magazine.”
― C.K. McDonnell, The Stranger Times

“I like that kid. She’s got a wonderful angry energy. Like she’s decided life is crap and we’re all just killing time until we meet a slow and painful death. She is well ahead of the game on that front.”
― C.K. McDonnell, The Stranger Times

“Yes,’ said Sturgess, in a way that acknowledged a lot of words had just been spoken.”
― C.K. McDonnell, The Stranger Times

“People hold a lot of false assumptions about hippies. For a start, they’re not the relaxed individuals people imagine them to be. If you were to leave two of them in a room for long enough, you could guarantee a heated and bitter argument. They all have remarkably entrenched ideas about how the world, the human body, and damn near everything else works. The only thing a lot of them have in common is a fevered certainty that the world would be a better place if everyone just listened to them.”
― C.K. McDonnell, The Stranger Times

“When the doors had closed, Hannah turned to him. ‘Did we just commit a crime?’ ‘Didn’t you set a house on fire there a few weeks ago?’ ‘What’s that got to do with anything?’ ‘I’m just saying – technically you’re on a spree.”
― C.K. McDonnell, The Stranger Times

“Because on a base level, to which none of us admits, we all secretly think it’s pretty much done by magic – and on an even deeper level, we all know that you don’t question magic with logic, or else the magic might get the hump and stop working.”
― C.K. McDonnell, The Stranger Times

“I appreciate you think everything in life should be fixed by you shouting at it, but sadly that is not the case.”
― C.K. McDonnell, The Stranger Times

“Grace waggled her eyebrows to an extent Hannah would not have thought possible on the human face. To be fair, in Hannah’s old crowd of Botoxed ‘friends’, facial expressions were something you picked from a catalogue and stuck with for the rest of your life.”
― C.K. McDonnell, The Stranger Times

“From her pocket she pulled a fresh tube of toothpaste, a toothbrush and a can of deodorant. ‘Here are those toiletries you asked for.’ Banecroft looked at the items in confusion. ‘When did I ask for them? I didn’t ask for them!’ ‘OK,’ said Hannah. ‘I’ll rephrase: here are those toiletries you desperately need.”
― C.K. McDonnell, The Stranger Times

“The car was old. Not classic old, just old old. He’d tried to sell it last year but couldn’t interest even the scrapyard in purchasing it. He called it ‘the Zombie’ because, despite bits falling off, the sickly engine and a near-constant groaning noise from the suspension, it inexplicably kept going.”
― C.K. McDonnell, The Stranger Times

“Yes. It is tradition. The first month Vincent was here, he tried to stop it. There was nearly a riot. One gentleman tried to set himself on fire.’ ‘Oh my!’ Grace waved her hand dismissively. ‘He did not have petrol or anything; he just tried to set his anorak alight with a box of matches.”
― C.K. McDonnell, The Stranger Times

“You are a fighter. You got through a terrible marriage; you can get through this.’ ‘Really? That’s your motivational gambit?’ ‘Sorry, all of my husbands died loyal and decent men. I have not got a frame of reference for infidelity.”
― C.K. McDonnell, The Stranger Times

“God, I really hate people now.’ ‘You do not mean that,’ said Grace in a cheerful tone of voice. ‘You have just forgotten how nice most people are. As soon as you meet somebody who does not think their tortoise is a vampire or that Sigourney Weaver is trying to control them through the TV, you will remember how much you like people.”
― C.K. McDonnell, The Stranger Times

“What would you call it when a couple from Wolverhampton believes that alien beings – as in highly sophisticated creatures capable of intergalactic space travel – are inexplicably interested in not just Wolverhampton, but the meat and two veg of a bloke called Clive from Wolverhampton?”
― C.K. McDonnell, The Stranger Times

“It had taught her two valuable lessons: one, you couldn’t trust people; and two, alcohol was only the answer if the question was ‘How can I make everything worse?”
― C.K. McDonnell, The Stranger Times

“The cruellest love is that which is granted late and taken early.”
― C.K. McDonnell, The Stranger Times

“It was a conversation in name only. He’d give him another two minutes and then hit the button under the counter that made a fake phone ring in the back office.”
― C.K. McDonnell, The Stranger Times

“The Admiral’s Arms had three things going for it: location, location, location. It was close by. The building beside it looked a lot nicer and it was in the process of being knocked down.”
― C.K. McDonnell, The Stranger Times

“His first week in uniform on the streets of Manchester had coincided with university Rag Week, which meant students trying to outdo each other in the stupid stakes – be it drunken dares, drunken pranks or just drunken drinking.”
― C.K. McDonnell, The Stranger Times