The Lock-Up Quotes

“He turned on her a look of desolation, baffled and defenseless. Quirke thought of Goya’s painting of the little dog in the corrida. He had seen it years before in the Prado and had never forgotten it.”
― John Banville, The Lock-Up

“Faded, yes. Reduced in substance. He seemed not entirely there, to others or to himself. He was preoccupied, absentminded, always distracted. His manner was that of a man constantly patting his pockets in search of something he had lost, or misplaced, or only imagined had been there in the first place.”
― John Banville, The Lock-Up

“He was pumped full of grief and a kind of pent-up, seething rage against the world in general and his immediate surroundings in particular. His presence in it made the room seem small, small and confined.”
― John Banville, The Lock-Up

“The thing about grief was that you could press upon it at its sharpest points and blunt them, only for the bluntness to spread throughout the system and make it ache like one vast bruise.”
― John Banville, The Lock-Up

“moorhen swam on the water, delicately unzipping the placid surface as it went, her half-grown chicks strung out in a line behind her, bobbing along.”
― John Banville, The Lock-Up

“He contemplated, yet again, the impenetrable mystery of other people.”
― John Banville, The Lock-Up

“Shafts of evening sunlight stood in the window like brandished lances.”
― John Banville, The Lock-Up

“Do you know how Robert Mitchum proposed to his wife?” “No—how did Robert Mitchum propose to his wife?” “He said, ‘Stick with me, baby, and you’ll be farting through silk for the rest of your life.’” Molly blushed, but laughed”
― John Banville, The Lock-Up

“Were these moments of lightness granted to him so as to make more terrible his eventual expulsion into a final darkness?”
― John Banville, The Lock-Up

“There was no accounting for these sunlit moments. He accepted them humbly and with gratitude, as well as a touch of apprehensiveness.”
― John Banville, The Lock-Up

“Through winter-time we call on spring, And through the spring on summer call, And when something something ring, Declare that winter’s best of all.”
― John Banville, The Lock-Up

“Houyhnhnms.”
― John Banville, The Lock-Up

“Her face would be beautiful if it were less interesting.”
― John Banville, The Lock-Up

“His breathing was shallow and rapid. In the course of her work she had dealt with many people in shock, and this, she knew, was how those in that state breathed, as if they had been running headlong and had stopped only for a moment before lumbering off again in desperate flight from themselves and their loss.”
― John Banville, The Lock-Up

“plangent”
― John Banville, The Lock-Up

“purlieus”
― John Banville, The Lock-Up

“Home. The word fell with a soundless thud.”
― John Banville, The Lock-Up

“I said, ‘but I don’t like to drink in the morning.’ He goggled at me, from under his famously bushy eyebrows, and said, ‘For God’s sake, man, what are you talking about? None of us likes it.”
― John Banville, The Lock-Up

“roistering”
― John Banville, The Lock-Up

“ague.”
― John Banville, The Lock-Up

“presentiment,”
― John Banville, The Lock-Up

“embrasure”
― John Banville, The Lock-Up

“lank”
― John Banville, The Lock-Up

“sedgy”
― John Banville, The Lock-Up

“shepherd’s crook.”
― John Banville, The Lock-Up

“loden”
― John Banville, The Lock-Up

“El trabajo le hará libre.”
― Benjamin Black, Las hermanas Jacobs