Quotes from Anthony Horowitz

It was probably because they sensed her unhappiness. Clarissa was all on her own. She had never married. She seemed to spend half her life in the church. He was always seeing her coming in and out. To be fair to her, she often stopped to have a chat with him but then of course she didn't really have anyone to talk to unless she was on her knees. She looked a bit like her brother, Sir Magnus

Perhaps he had been a little faster. But he had been luckier too. It would not always be that way. Bond knew that there would come a time, a moment in a mission, when his luck would run out. It was a mathematical certainty. No agent had ever survived long in the Double O section and one day someone, somewhere would have the edge and it would be he lying there dead, flat-out in the rain. But not today.

Cara Grunshaw and Darren Mills are both thick as shit. I've met police dogs with more intelligence than those two. You could tell them everything we've done, down to the last word, and they'd still end up running round in a circle, sniffing each other's arses.

She never murdered anyone. She didn't want to destroy the world. But I think there's another sort of evil that is often overlooked ... and it is this. Granny never did anything to help anyone else. She was rich and healthy (she lived into her nineties) but she was utterly selfish and complained all the time. ... As far as I know, she never tried to make anyone happy ... and if you ask me, evil is a perfectly reasonable description of someone like that.

Why is it that we have such a need for murder mystery and what is it that attracts us – the crime or the solution? Do we have some primal need of bloodshed because our own lives are so safe, so comfortable?

Bond knew it was over. This was it. But he also knew what he was going to do. Even as he had been speaking, he had been lowering himself imperceptibly, inch by inch, simply by bending his knees. The rain had helped him. It was driving into the Russian's eyes. He hadn't seen what Bond was doing. The Russian fired at point-blank range. He had been aiming directly at Bond's chest.

The events that lead up to a murder are as closely bound together as the atoms that make up a molecule. It is all too easy to disregard or overlook a single atom, but if you do so, the sugar that you were expecting may turn out to be salt.

It's always been my belief that the best way to weaken your enemies, whether they are bullies, politicians or unpleasant relatives, is to laugh at them.

I don't think readers will give a damn about a divorce lawyer,' she said. 'Can't you make him something more interesting … like an actor or a musician?

I am sixty-five years old. I have had a long life and I will say that in many respects it has been a good one. I had expected to die on many occasions before now. You might even say that death has been a companion of mine, always walking two steps behind. Well, now he has caught up.

I can't even remember who said it, but the only way that book was going to change someone's life was if it fell on them.

Even the brightest sunlight could hide many dark and ugly secrets.

You've already said you're going to kill me," Alex said, "but I didn't think that meant you were going to bore me to death.

I tried to get a job in a freak show," he [Gregor] went on, "but they said I was overqualified. So I became the porter at Groosham Grange.

It's amazing, really, the invisible process that can turn complete strangers into friends.

The air was like syrup.

The strange thing was that he was more relaxed, now, after being told the news. It was as if he had always been expecting it and was merely grateful that, at last, it had been delivered.

Mary Westmacott, which was, in fact, Christie's nom de plume.

go? We argued. I told him it was a fait accompli.

fact, I've always had a fondness for seaside towns, particularly out of season when the streets are empty and the sky is grey and drizzling.

wanted to remind myself just how terrible it was: the awful language, the use of clichés, its near-pornographic relish. The books must have made Dawn Adams a ton of money, and as I'd learned from my time with Hawthorne, money and murder have a way of going hand in hand.

There are, I think, occasions when you know that you have arrived at the end of a long journey, when even though your destination is concealed from sight, you are somehow aware that when you turn the corner that lies just ahead of you, there it will be.

It looked a little like a railway terminus as designed by an overambitious architect … one obviously with ideas above his station.

The past learns from the future, the future learns from the past. I already told you, we are the same five.