Quotes from Michael Marshall Smith

and only when that happens do you realise just how much silence there really is. Silence between lovers, when something really needs to be said; silence from a parent when a child needs some word more than anything else in the world; silences and in betweens and everything which isn't an answer.

Love and death are very similar. They're the times in your life when you most want to believe in magic, when you yearn for some symbolic act or retrospective edit that can change the world you find yourself in.

Is she dead?" called Zenda. Sort of," I shouted, "And the pizza's completely fucked too.

Everything you've done, everything you've seen, everything you've become, remains. You never can go back, only forward, and if you don't bring the whole of yourself with you, you'll never see the sun again

There are times when life seems like a struggle where the only reward you get for hanging on is the chance to struggle some more.

When you're a child the world forbears you, allows you your flights of imagination, your feelings of specialness. But sooner or later the privileges are withdrawn, and all you're left with is a stunned bitterness at the realisation that you're just the same as everybody else.

If people knew that I really am what I say I am,' he said, 'you know they'd never forgive me.' 'Don't worry,' I said, 'Your lack of a secret is safe with us.

You have to accept gifts occasionally, because there are some things you can't give yourself

The realest and scariest monsters are internal demons, the specters of regret and guilt and lack of fulfillment, awareness of the entropic end of love, or the first shivers occasioned by the realization of our own ageing, and the eventual inevitability of death.

I guess, like some guy once said, if triangles invented a god, the chances are high it would have three sides.

All non-smokers seem to live in the belief that smokers have wandered naively through life, bereft of the knowledge that their habit is extremely bad for them.

When you let it get personal, the cost becomes personal too. You're opening your own heart here. You sure you want to do that?

Your story can change. Overnight.

When you meet someone you love, then you change for good. That's why the other person will never know or understand the earlier you, and why you can never change back. And why, when that person starts to go, you'll feel the tear deep in your heart long before your head has the slightest clue what's going on.

Deep inside each of us is a part that mistrusts order and craves the relief of seeing the world shatter into the chaos it believes lies underneath all along.

Everyone's alone in their world, because everybody's life is different. You can send people letters, and show them photos, but they can never come to visit where you live. Unless you love them. And then they can burn it down.

I wash with the can of water I set aside the night before, and eat whatever I put next to it. The washing is not strictly necessary but, again, I have always found it a good way to greet the day. You wash after a period of work, after all, and what else is a night of sleep, if not work, or a journey at least? ("The Things He Said")

Storyboarded by the West Coast's finest, the ceiling celebrated the exploits of that most durable of action heroes—God.