Quotes from Robert Galbraith

I'd imagine "murderess" trumps "wife" when defining a close relationship.

Manson had achieved it more successfully, because his myth would not fluctuate with fashion: evil was always fascinating.

He's a writer," she said, as though this explained everything. "He's disappeared before?" "He's emotional," she said, her expression glum. "He's always going off on one, but it's been ten days and I know he's really upset but I need him home now.

In a family there is always something or other going awry… Henrik Ibsen, Rosmersholm

He felt as though his capacity for loving had been blunted, the nerve endings severed.

Now the sound of her voice, and her laughter, acted on him as it usually did, by making everything seem fractionally less awful.

It's like you're traveling in a different direction to the rest of us.

And I swear to you, he looked murderous. He stepped right up to me, the way a man will when he wants to remind you what he could do, if he wanted.

I've upset you, haven't I?" said Morris. "No, you haven't upset me," said Robin. After all, "upset" wasn't quite the same as "enrage.

A lot of men find it hard to hear how well their other halves get on with other men.

Bestigui, who was five feet six inches at the most, had pushed his way out from behind his desk now; as unafraid of the enormous Strike as a pit bull whose yard has been invaded by a Rottweiler.

blood was thumping in her ears: the sensation of not being heard was becoming increasingly common during these interactions)

People change in ten years,' the therapist had responded. 'Why does it have to be a question of you being mistaken in Matthew? Perhaps it's simply that you've both changed?

Why did the memory of innocence sting so much, as you got older? Why did the memory of the child who'd thought she was invulnerable, who'd never known cruelty, give her more pain than pleasure?

The dead girl had her glimpse of earthly paradise: littered with designer goods, and celebrities to sneer at, and handsome drivers to joke with, and the yearning for it had brought her to this: seven mourners, and a minister who did not know her name.

Robin remained quite still in front of her dressing table, staring down at the box containing her wedding shoes, thinking. She saw the risks plainly spread beneath her, like the rocks and raging waters beneath a tightrope walker's feet.

shoveling food into his mouth. Thoughts came fluently, cogently:

Don't you think we tend to invest some categories of people with unearned goodness? I suppose we've all got a need to trust people who seem to have power over life and death.

Chiswell's and Winn's offices were in the Palace of Westminster itself, which, with its vaulted ceilings, libraries, tearooms and air of comfortable grandeur, might have been an old university college. A half-covered passageway, watched over by large stone statues of a unicorn and lion, led to an escalator to Portcullis House. This was a modern crystal palace, with a folded glass roof, triangular panes held in place by thick black struts.

It was difficult for him to decide whether she was sincere, or performing her own character; her beauty got in the way, like a thick cobweb through which it was difficult to see her clearly.

Strike, who had heard the testimony of Brittany Brockbank and Rhona Laing and many others like them, knew that most women's rapists and killers were not strangers in masks who reached out of the dark space under the stairs. They were the father, the husband, the mother's or the sister's boyfriend...

Can't you understand that I'd much rather help catch him that sit around waiting for him to pounce?

It's like a maze. Moment I start thinking I'm getting somewhere, I turn a corner and come up against a dead end. Or find myself back where I started.

This, he thought, was how women roped you in. They added you to lists and forced you to confirm and commit. They impressed upon you that if you didn't show up a plate of hot food would go begging, a gold-backed chair would remain unoccupied, a cardboard place name would sit shamefully upon a table, announcing your rudeness to the world.