Quotes from Robert Galbraith

The guilt that had tumbled from Strike seemed to have fallen heavily into her own lap.

Even that day, with his handprint across her face, she didn't want to tell me, because there was a bit of her that didn't want to hurt him. I saw it all the bloody time with my domestic abuse survivors. Women still protecting them. Still worrying about them! Love dies hard in some women.

Of course, many would say it was rich for him to have opinions about how women smelled, given that his signature odor was that of an old ashtray, overlain with a splash of Pour Un Homme on special occasions. Nevertheless, having spent much of his childhood in conditions of squalor, Strike found cleanliness a necessary trait in anyone he could find attractive. He'd liked Robin's previous scent, which he'd missed when she wasn't in the office.

An image of Charlotte hung permanently in Robin's head these days, like a shadowy portrait she'd never wanted hung . . . Last night, though, that image had become stark and fixed: a darkly romantic vision of a lost and dying love, breathing her final words in Strike's ear as she lay among the trees.

pack and the pack to her bedside drawer. As she stood and picked up

How easy it was to capitalise on a person's own bent for self-destruction; how simple to nudge them into non-being, then to stand back and shrug and agree that it had been the inevitable result of a chaotic, catastrophic life.

For in every ill-turn of fortune the most unhappy sort of unfortunate man is the one who has been happy.

You lost a good friend and a wife within—what—months of each other?" "A few months, yes." "You were writing all through that time?" "Yes," said Fancourt, with an angry, condescending laugh, "I was writing all through that time. It's my profession. Would anyone ask you whether you were still in the army while you were having private difficulties?

In spite of the conventional bottle of wine held on her lap, she was highly strung, happy to take risks and chances. She lived alone and talked books not babies; she was not, in short, Lucy's kind of woman

Papa had no inner life. He was hollow, hollow… profit, acquisition and ticking little social-democratic boxes… his death grew naturally out of his life. Anomic suicide: Durkheim describes it well. Everyone's death is a fulfilment, really.

He pointed a finger at the sky. 'What?' said Robin, looking up into the blue haze. 'If you look carefully,' said Strike, 'you might just see an asteroid passing through the house of bollocks.

mine onely faithfull frend In heauy plight and sad perplexitie; Whereof I sorie, yet my selfe did bend, Him to recomfort with my companie. Edmund Spenser The

If you want lifelong friendship and selfless camaraderie, join the army and learn to kill. If you want a lifetime of temporary alliances with peers who will glory in your every failure, write novels.

Hard to remember these days that there was a time when you had to wait for the ink and paper reviews to see your work excoriated. With the invention of the internet, any subliterate cretin can be Michiko Kakutani.

Strike hated the memory of these fantasies more than he hated remembering the pain caused by their eternal unfulfillment . . .

Nobody who had not lived there would ever understand that London was a country unto itself. They

Is demum miser est, cuius nobilitas miserias nobilitat. Unhappy is he whose fame makes his misfortunes famous.

He looked unsmilingly upon Fancourt's astonishment. The writer rallied quickly. "Ovid?" "Catullus," said Strike, heaving himself off the low pouffe with the aid of the table. "Translates roughly: "So that's how you crept up on me, an acid eating away My guts, stole from me everything I most treasure? Yes, alas, stole: grim poison in my blood The plague, alas, of the friendship we once had.

At the very back she found a cupboard. Opening it, she saw a plaque to suffragette Emily Davison. Apparently, she had slept there overnight so that she could give her place of residence as the House of Commons on the census of 1911, seven years before women were given the vote. Emily Davison, she could not help but feel, would not have approved of Robin's choice to place a failing marriage above freedom to work.

ever told. S'pose you've heard a lot of stories like

Strike, meanwhile, was reflecting that Robin had never before called him 'Strike' when annoyed. Perversely, it had sounded more intimate than the use of his first name. He'd quite enjoyed it.

The simplest, most plausible explanation I can think of is that somebody offered her a lift. A car pulled up—" "Or a van," said Strike. Robin had, indeed, reached the same conclusion he had. "Someone she knew—" "Or someone who seemed safe. An elderly man—" "Or what she thinks is a woman." "Exactly," said Robin.

The bedroom door, still ajar since Matthew's exit, swung open as the banished Labrador, Rowntree, came waddling into the bedroom. He reported to Robin for an absent-minded rub of his ears, then flopped down beside the bed. His tail bumped against the floor for a while and then he fell wheezily asleep. To the accompaniment of his snuffling snores, Robin continued to comb the message boards.

Jasper always said, "Tory faithful likes bastards or buffoons", and that he was neither one nor the other.