Quotes from Robert Galbraith

that at least, while fighting, she knew she was alive.

Lucy's idea of sympathy compared unfavorably with some of the interrogation techniques they had used at Guantanamo.

She lay dying, wrapped in invisible robes of martyrdom, presenting her helplessness and passivity to him like adornments, and his dominant feeling was distaste.

He had spent much of his childhood perched on the coast, with the taste of salt in the air: this was a place of woodland and river, mysterious and secretive in a different way from St. Mawes, the little town with its long smuggling history, where colorful houses tumbled down to the beach.

The brutal intrusion of officialdom into private devastation.

After a brief hesitation, the doctor accepted Strike's proffered hand, and as the two men shook, Robin wondered how aware men were of the power dynamics that played out between them, while women stood watching.

For all his determination to keep her at arm's length, they had literally leaned on each other. He could remember exactly what it felt like to have his arm around her waist as they had meandered towards Hazlitt's Hotel. She was tall enough to hold easily. He had never fancied very small women. Matthew would not like this, she had said. He would have liked it even less had he known how much Strike had liked it.

Girls like that idea, that little bit of possessiveness. They t'ink it means he only wants her, when o' course, it's the other way round. He only wants her available to him. He's still free to look at other girls...

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.

Matthew would not like this, she had said. He would have liked it even less had he know how much Strike had liked it.

he was better suited to a crisis than to keeping a commitment going . . . He was well suited to emergencies, to holding his nerve, to quick thinking and fast reactions, but found the qualities demanded by Joan's slow decline harder to summon.

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.

Everyone liked Robin. He liked Robin. How could he fail to like her, after everything they had been through together? However, from the very first he had told himself: this far and no further. A distance must be maintained. Barriers must remain in place.

Strike explained about his failed attempt to buy Robin perfume, the previous December. ' . . . so I asked the assistant, but he kept showing me things with names like . . . I dunno . . . "Shaggable You" . . . ' The laugh Robin failed to repress was so loud that people turned to look at her . . . ' . . . and I panicked,' Strike admitted . . .

I believe you could bewitch anyone—if you set yourself to do it. Henrik Ibsen, Rosmersholm

Handsome in the manner of an Aryan prince, possessor of a trust fund, born to fulfill a preordained place in his family and the world; a man with all the confidence twelve generations of well-documented lineage can give.

She's lived with it for forty years . . . People who live with something that massive stop being able to see it. It's the backdrop of their lives. It's only glaringly obvious to everyone else.

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.

And don't ," bellowed Robin from behind him, "buy me any more fucking flowers !" "No danger of that!" yelled Strike over his shoulder, as he strode away into the darkness.

A marked desire to be considered more than he felt himself to be; to become endowed, in fact, with that unpredictable, dangerous and transformative quality: fame.

However, Strike knew that the truly deluded would happily discount such trivialities as DNA evidence, citing contamination, or conspiracy. They saw what they wanted to see, blind to inconvenient, implacable truth.

Women, in his experience, often expected you to understand that it was a measure of how much they loved you that they tried their damnedest to change you.

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.

She had drawn strength from everyone else's weakness, hoping that her adrenaline-fueled bravery would carry her safely back to normality,