The Ink Black Heart Quotes

“He experienced one of those moments of simultaneous confusion and clarity that belong to the drunk and the desperate.”
― Robert Galbraith, The Ink Black Heart

“there’s nothing like Latin for slapping the fuck out of people who think they’re better than you. I’ve used it several times to good effect.”
― Robert Galbraith, The Ink Black Heart

“Stab the body and it heals, but injure the heart and the wound lasts a lifetime – Mineko Iwasaki”
― Robert Galbraith, The Ink Black Heart

“Strike looked down at his own plate: where there should have been chips, there was only salad.”
― Robert Galbraith, The Ink Black Heart

“But as I’m not going around killing people I don’t like, I don’t think there’s much wrong with admitting some people contribute more to the world than others.’ ‘So you don’t subscribe to “any man’s death diminishes me”?’ said Robin. ‘I wouldn’t feel remotely diminished by the deaths of some of the bastards I’ve met.”
― Robert Galbraith, The Ink Black Heart

“Not for the first time, he had cause to marvel at the fact that the woman who’d come to him as a temporary secretary had proven to be the agency’s biggest asset.”
― Robert Galbraith, The Ink Black Heart

“When you give someone your whole heart and he doesn’t want it, you cannot take it back. It’s gone forever – Sylvia Plath”
― Robert Galbraith, The Ink Black Heart

“The idea of suggesting that Strike stop lying to the women in his life occurred only to be dismissed, on the basis that the resolutions to stop smoking, lose weight and exercise were enough personal improvement to be getting on with.”
― Robert Galbraith, The Ink Black Heart

“in a prosperous country, in peacetime – notwithstanding those heavy blows of fate to which nobody was immune, and those strokes of unearned luck of which Inigo, the inheritor of wealth, had clearly benefited – character was the most powerful determinant of life’s course.”
― Robert Galbraith, The Ink Black Heart

“He was starting to feel like a truffle pig trying to do its job in a room full of incense, dead fish and strong cheese.”
― Robert Galbraith, The Ink Black Heart

“He is strangely attractive, isn’t he? Bit beaten-up-looking, but I’ve never minded that.”
― Robert Galbraith, The Ink Black Heart

“Men are generally predisposed to think they're being flirted with.”
― Robert Galbraith, The Ink Black Heart

“That's the problem with communal buildings. They're only as secure as the least security-conscious person living there.”
― Robert Galbraith, The Ink Black Heart

“I have forged me in sevenfold heats A shield from foes and lovers, And no one knows the heart that beats Beneath the shield that covers.”
― Robert Galbraith, The Ink Black Heart

“With those words, the busy night seemed to slow again around Cormoran Strike, and the constant growl of traffic seemed suddenly muted. This time he wasn’t staring down into Robin’s face, full of alcohol and desire: the seismic change had happened inside him because he felt something break and he knew, at last, that there was no putting it back together.
It wasn’t that he saw the truth of Charlotte in that instant, because he’d come to believe that there was no single, static truth about any human being, but he understood, once and for all, that something he’d taken to be true wasn’t.”
― Robert Galbraith, The Ink Black Heart

“Robin turned her iPad so that Strike could see it. He moved his chair in: Robin felt his knee bump hers.”
― Robert Galbraith, The Ink Black Heart

“Feeling guilty about not achieving stuff is the result of internalised capitalism, apparently.’ ‘Seriously?’ ‘Oh yeah. You never been to a communist country? Everyone lies on sofas all day while trained poodles bring them cake.”
― Robert Galbraith, The Ink Black Heart

“Even if Heather had barely known her, as seemed to be the case, her frank enjoyment of her fancy lunch and her persistent eyeing-up of Strike seemed both inappropriate and distasteful to Robin.”
― Robert Galbraith, The Ink Black Heart

“She’s not big on achievements either: she says so on her tumblr page. Feeling guilty about not achieving stuff is the result of internalised capitalism, apparently.’ ‘Seriously?’ ‘Oh yeah. You never been to a communist country? Everyone lies on sofas all day while trained poodles bring them cake.”
― Robert Galbraith, The Ink Black Heart

“The thing he'd been trying for years not to look at, and not to name, had stepped out of the dark corner where he'd attempted to keep it, and Strike knew there was no longer any way of denying its existence.”
― Robert Galbraith, The Ink Black Heart

“Well of blackness, all defiling, Full of flattery and reviling, Ah, what mischief hast thou wrought Out of what was airy thought, What beginnings and what ends, Making and dividing friends! Mary Elizabeth Coleridge The Contents of an Ink Bottle Strike and Robin shared a taxi from the office to the Arts Club the following Tuesday.”
― Robert Galbraith, The Ink Black Heart

“Tis a strange mystery, the power of words! Life is in them, and death. A word can send The crimson colour hurrying to the cheek, Hurrying with many meanings, or can turn The current cold and deadly to the heart.”
― Robert Galbraith, The Ink Black Heart

“in a prosperous country, in peacetime – notwithstanding those heavy blows of fate to which nobody was immune, and those strokes of unearned luck of which Inigo, the inheritor of wealth, had clearly benefited – character was the most powerful determinant of life’s course. ‘Did”
― Robert Galbraith, The Ink Black Heart

“One of the children hanging about Pointed at the whole dreadful heap and smiled… There is something terrible about a child. Charlotte Mew In Nunhead Cemetery”
― Robert Galbraith, The Ink Black Heart

“When Ed found out I was seein’ Kea again, everyfing turned to shit between us. We couldn’ talk wivvout tellin’ each other ’ow much of a fuckin’ bastard we fort the ovver one was…”
― Robert Galbraith, The Ink Black Heart

“Edie was a friend of mine and Mariam’s,’ said Preston Pierce in a low growl. ‘Her murder isn’t exciting fucking goss to us. Why don’t you stop pretending you wanna learn drawing and go sniff around in the cemetery? Might still be a bit of Edie’s blood on the grass. You could frame it. Sell it on eBay.”
― Robert Galbraith, The Ink Black Heart

“So Ledwell doesn’t like our game because ‘the game’s really more of a metaphor’. We literally based it on your own rules, u pretentious cow.”
― Robert Galbraith, The Ink Black Heart

“We subscribe to the Viking ideals of strength, solidarity and brotherhood. We live by the laws and maxims laid down in the Hávamál. We believe that feminism and the legalisation of homosexuality have disastrously undermined both the traditional family and wider society. We believe that multiculturalism has failed.”
― Robert Galbraith, The Ink Black Heart

“becos he fucks with people’s heads. He’s a control freak. he doesn’t like anyone having relationships that don’t involve him. Either you’re a suck up like Hartella or you end up getting kicked out. Ive only lasted this long because he needs me”
― Robert Galbraith, The Ink Black Heart

“He supposed you didn’t remain as slim as Madeline without eating sparingly, but a starvation diet wasn’t really his style, even if he could stand to lose a bit of weight.”
― Robert Galbraith, The Ink Black Heart