Quotes from Anthony Horowitz

The truth was important. The truth mattered. It mattered more than the fact that he was only twelve and that his story was completely preposterous. People like Granny, all bullies in fact, only managed to survive because they lived behind the truth. Once people knew them for what they were, they would be powerless.

It's like that poem Larkin wrote. "I have started to say 'A quarter of a century'/ Or 'thirty years back' /About my own life/It makes me breathless…

sometimes when ambitions burn out they do so gently.

Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go, McEwan's Atonement.

John had a soft spot for Yassen," he said. "He really liked him. What do you make of that? The spy and the assassin. A bit of an odd couple, I'd say…" And more than ten years later, Yassen had sacrificed himself for Alex, repaying the debt of an old friendship.

He drew a picture of me in court as a woman entirely dependent on the financial acumen of my husband, even though said husband was a drunk and a womaniser who had inherited all his wealth from his equally squalid father.

of those clothes.

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 still concealed from sight, you are somehow aware that when you turn the corner that likes just ahead of you, there it will be.

His uncle, Ian Rider, had taken him on a tour of the Greek islands when he was nine years old and he couldn't help being reminded of it. It was as if nothing had changed. Except, of course, that he was now working for MI6, he was using a false name, his new best friend was a psychotic killer and he had less than a week to stop London from being destroyed.

Hawthorne ignored this. 'Why did Akira Anno lie about being with you?' he asked. 'Having supper with an old friend, a publisher … you'd have thought there was nothing more innocent in the world.

He was someone who was only fully alive when he was working on a case. He needed there to have been a murder or some other violent crime. It was his entire raison d'être – another posh phrase which I am sure he would have hated.

But if she'd known him better, she might have been a little less curt with him. I saw the anger stirring in his eyes and it made me think of a crocodile rising from the mud.

He once said to me that it was like being in one of those Russian prisons where they lock you up without telling you the length of your sentence.

Akira Anno is Mark Belladonna, isn't she! Mark doesn't exist.' He rounded on Akira. 'You wrote those stupid books.

I do not know what has brought you here or how you have been driven to an action as extreme as the one you are now contemplating,' he said. 'You must be very unhappy. Of that I am sure. Will you believe me if I say that no matter how bad things may appear, they will be better tomorrow if you allow tomorrow to do its work? That is the way of things, Miss Mitchell, and I am the living proof of it.

you can't beat a good whodunnit: the twists and turns, the clues and the red herrings and then, finally, the satisfaction of having everything explained to you in a way that makes you kick yourself because you hadn't seen it from the start.

But that's impossible. They're full of pornography.' I searched for the worst thing I could say about them. 'They objectify women!

The world was healing itself.

She had a brittle quality, as if she needed charity herself, but knew that she would never get it. The tragedy that had changed her life was still with her.

Atticus Pünd had no time for religion. During the war, he had been persecuted not for what he believed but for what he was, a Greek Jew whose great-grandfather had emigrated to Germany sixty years before he was born, unaware that although he was bettering his own life, his decision would lead to the extinction of almost his entire bloodline.

Is that why you asked if Weston was married? You think he's gay too?' 'It wouldn't surprise me. That sort look after their own.

You see what I mean?" Jerry said. Tom had his back to the buildings. He was looking at the sea. "Anyone fancy a swim?" he asked. "Yeah." Jerry nodded slowly. "You bring any trunks?" "No." "It doesn't matter. We can swim in our underpants." "I'm not wearing underpants." Jerry glanced at his brother. "Charming!

I controlled him and made sure that I pressed all the right buttons for a young audience. He didn't smoke. He didn't swear. He didn't have a gun. And he certainly wasn't homophobic.

flower blossoming in the car park or the sparrowhawk losing its feathers or any of the other rubbish she saw fit to print.