Quotes from Adrian McKinty

Human beings are pattern-seeking animals. It's part of our DNA. That's why conspiracy theories and gods are so popular: we always look for the wider, bigger explanations for things.

The driver had on Radio 1, which was giving us Kylie Minogue's 'I should be so lucky'....By the song's second verse I was already longing for an IRA ambush and and by the second chorus I was dreaming of a rogue comet strike.

Who do you think's after you, Shane, my lad? Or is it just the dark you're afeared of?

Radio One played "Ebony and Ivory," a new song by Paul McCartney and Stevie Wonder. The breakfast DJ Mike Read played it two times in a row which was pretty hardcore of him as it was clearly the worst song of the decade so far, perhaps of the entire century.

Recall that one builds a labyrinth not to hide but to lie in wait.

but the beast was man, had always been man.

As J. G. Ballard pointed out, civilization is just a thin, fragile veneer over the law of the jungle: Better you than me. Better your kid than my kid.

Ireland in shades of black and green under the gibbous moon. Ireland under the canopy of grey cloud, under the crow's wing and the helicopter blade. A night ride over the Lagan valley and the bandit country of South Armagh. The music in my head was Mahler's Ninth Symphony, which opens with a hesitant syncopated motif evocative of Mahler's irregular heartbeat.

She was her mother's favorite saying come to life. The cure for everything is salt water: tears, sweat, or the sea.

None taken, son. I'd love to see things from your point of view but I can't get my head that far up my arse.

Nelson had a face like Brian Clough getting sodomised with a pineapple.

If I don't make it, don't let them cast some asshole to play me in the movie version of this

The minutes ticked past. This is why peelers need a book. A wee paperback to stick in your pocket.

What's news?" She put the magazine down and looked at me. "Philip K. Dick is dead." "Who's that?" I asked.

She looks at her hastily scrawled, extremely incriminating checklist. 1. Ransom 2. Burner phones 3. Research target/ victim 4. Get gun, rope, duct tape, etc. 5. Research place to hide victim

A paranoid man is a man who knows a little about what's going on.

more guilt, guilt, guilt. That's the Irish condition.

Rachel shivers with a mixture of fascination and revulsion. How can she think about this sort of thing so glibly? Is that what trauma does to you?

Life's tough and even tougher when you're stupid

As the Russians say, getting what you want sometimes requires moving like the knight in chess: forward and to the left.

Patriotism is a hard disease to eradicate, and ennui stamps us all.

Are you aware of the Japanese concept of mono no aware, the bitter sweetness of things?" "I'm afraid not." "The Japanese sages say the best way to appreciate beauty is to focus on its transient, fragile and fleeting nature.

Your body is a blade sharpened by tears

I remember, but you see, that doesn't work for me. I say life is given meaning by context. There are no individual selves. There are only humans embedded in practices, places, cultures.