Quotes from Christopher Fowler

The ageing process,' said Bryant, pausing at the top of the stairs. 'It's killing me. Hang on a minute, I have to get my breath back. You know the things I hate most about getting old? Kneeling down and wondering if I'll ever get back up again. Never leaving the house without having to pee first. Old people tell me about their illnesses and assume I care. Your lungs turn into deflated balloons, your feet hurt all the time. Look at me—I look like a bald bat.

We're breeding an army of psychotics.

that the best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter, but

Old age should burn and rave at close of day.

What humanity wants most is crude sensation. Really? I thought what humanity wanted most was dignity.

It's impossible to use up cats, they just keep reappearing. Didn't she have lots of kittens?

Mr May, you reach a certain age when you don't have enemies any more, just people who find you mildly annoying.

Rage, rage"!' shouted Bryant, picking up his walking stick and waving it like a pirate cutlass. '"Rage against the dying of the light"!' 'Has he been at the sherry?' Renfield looked nonplussed. 'No,' said May wearily, 'he's been at the Dylan Thomas. Don't worry, I'll take care of him.

The fear of poverty is never far away from the working-class mind, and all the plasma TVs, PlayStations and iPhones are just talismans warding off that darkness.

Cats have short lives. It's how they punish you for getting attached to them. She couldn't last forever.

I know everyone thinks I'm difficult. It's just that as I've got older I've become less gullible. And that makes me harder to control. I don't listen to my peers anymore, but that's because most of them are either dead or have gone mad, so now I'm free to explore anything I want.

Crazy leaders teach us crazy habits.

He kept his shirt-tail hanging out below the hem of his jacket as a white flag to motorists; over four thousand people had been killed in blackout accidents during the first few months of the war. It was safer to take an overseas posting with the British Expeditionary Force.

Bryant ambled. In Paris he would have been a boulevardier, a flâneur, but in London, a city that no longer had time for anything but making money, he was just slow and in the way.

But sometimes you just resent being told what to like.

said May when they reached Hampstead tube station.

In the theatre] Thanks.' He paused on the stairs. And good- Don't say it! yelled Helena. No whistling, no well-wishing. I thought you weren't superstitious. I'm not,' she said defiantly, 'but obviously there are limits.

suppurating bunghole with all the allure of a hair on a toilet seat.

The South Koreans are better educated than the English. The Swedish are happier. The Germans are more compassionate. The Azerbaijanis are more literate. Brunei has cleaner air. Latvia has faster broadband. Everywhere has a better climate. And yet for some astonishing reason you still act as if you matter. Why is that, do you suppose? Ah, yes, empire. You lost yours over a century ago. The Americans are only just losing theirs and that's not going down so well, either.

You can't pour a pint of bitter into a cocktail glass.

Thanks to Hitler, we are no longer living in a world that cares about the death of someone because they were loved in the past. It cares only if that death can do damage to the future.

Bryant lurched away from the kerb and out into the traffic without bothering to look or signal. He'd come to anticipate the chorus of horns greeting his entry into the traffic stream, rather as bugles announced the arrival of Caesar.

a second-rate nation run with the economic vision of an Armenian pastry shop.

gap between rich and poor was not just one of wealth but of accountability