Quotes from Reginald Hill

and we are to each other for ever what was bearable only in my intuition of its impermanence. Death doesn't change things, then. It merely petrifies things for those who go on living.

A miner's terrace afforded little space for secret panels, priests' holes, escape tunnels. Even in persecution, the poor were disadvantaged.

But even as he laughed and turned and lost sight of her, he knew he was in error. He spun round and his mind kept spinning as his eyes sought desperately for some sign, some trace. But he had known before he turned that he was at last completely alone on the tower.

Then Miss Turner noticed Rosie was a bit hot and flushed. Probably only the start of a summer cold.

Make friends unless you feel strong enough to make enemies

One of Dalziel's dicta for police and public was, if you can't be honest you'd better be fucking clever.

We're turning into a geriatric society. The old are fighting back. They have the great advantage of an irresistible recruitment programme. It's called living.

But I think mebbe it was himself he blamed most. 'It 'ud be different if only she'd come back,' he'd say. 'I'd never let her out of my sight.

Compassion was a small flame, needing care and attention and protection from the wind. Perhaps the professional carers' first object was to preserve what they sensed as precious in themselves.

I heard the ball rattling among the trees. All I could hope was that I was lucky and had a decent lie so that I could chip out. Of course I played a provisional…" He had started walking forward as he talked and Joe was once more trotting slightly behind. "A Provisional?" he asked, wondering how the IRA had got into things.

What had seemed Bohemian was now Babylonian; what had begun as openness was now exhibitionism; the porn merchants had worked out that there was more money in joyless guilt than in guiltless joy, and the only freedom celebrated in these littered streets was the one civil liberty that civilised societies never denied their citizens – their right to seek degradation and self-destruction any which way they liked.

These signs and tokens are of no small value; they speak a universal language and act as a passport to the attention and support of the initiated in all parts of the world. They cannot be lost so long as memory retains its power….

Joe, don't go sensitive on me. It doesn't suit you." He consulted his feelings. She was right. And in any case, it was too much of an effort in this weather to keep it up. "Apology accepted," he said. "Apology? You going deaf too?

She'd also noted that the volume was stamped Property of the Longboat Hotel, Scarborough and the bookmark was a folded copy of a bill for a week's stay directed to the account of Mr. and Mrs. A.H. Dalziel.

All this flitted across his mind, plus an epiphanic revelation of the significance of that second initial which he'd never known the Fat Man use anywhere else as he heard Urquhart say, "Don't know it, Hamish. What's it about?

She drew her hand away from beneath his and said, "Heard…in what sense?" "In the sense of I heard," he said. "He rang me. That's right. I was in bed and the phone rang and when I picked it up, it was Chris.

He was full of the glossy self-regard of men who shrugged off their importance in a way that only emphasized it.

feel. Or you might plead that it was not slanderous because it was true. Even this is not always an acceptable defence, I should add. The truth can often be slanderous if it is put in certain ways. But still, it would be your best bet.

furiosant, for there was certainly more of the mad bull

But of Marcus Felstead there was no sign.

Like the Fat Man said, it wasn't your collars kept you awake, it was the ones that got away

He looked real sad and lost. And all he said was, 'Help me, please help me.

They were dancing in the social room. A record player shuffled a few simple chords violently together, then dealt them out with heavy emphasis.

So what to do? . . . She shook her head impatiently. Choice is a largely delusional concept, her tutor used to say. Whether in politics, morals or shopping, we have far less than we imagine. In the end what we have to do often doesn't even figure on our list of pseudo-options.