Quotes from Reginald Hill

then I saw that there was a way to hell, even from the gates of heaven.

His attitude to physical clues was rather like that of the modern Christian to miracles. They could happen, but probably not just at the moment.

The pain of ignorance can end. The pain of knowledge is forever

Sorry?" said Dalziel turning. "What's that you said?" He cupped a large hand to a proportionally large ear. If the buggers get clever, he had once told Pascoe, pretend you can't hear. Then pretend you can't understand. Nothing's funny if it's repeated and explained.

Twelve strangers," he interrupted, "twelve citizens picked off the street. In this world we're unfortunate to live in, and especially in this septic isle we live on,where squalid politicians conspire with the squalid press to feed a half-educated and wholly complacent public on a diet of meretricious trivia, I'm sure it would be possible to concoct enough evidence to persuade twelve strangers that Nelson Mandela was a cannibal.

Hope is a black beetle. Stamp on it hard as you liked, it still scuttled on

his head bowed over a typewriter with the rapt concentration of a chimpanzee wondering how best to start Hamlet.

I am surrounded by wonderful women, thought Joe. Whoever said that stuff about a monstrous regiment got it wrong. Must have meant wondrous!

It contained, rather squashed but not beyond recognition, a custard tart. "Oh shit," said Pascoe. And suddenly, for some reason beyond reason, the barrier he'd been erecting both consciously and unconsciously between himself and the events in Mill Street crumbled like the walls of number 3, and when the nurse looked in to check that all was well, she found him with his face buried in his pillow, sobbing convulsively.

But Dalziel, when he went it would be like losing a mountain. Every time you saw the space where it had been, you'd be reminded nothing was forever, that even the very majesty of nature was only smoke and mirrors.

Or an amicable pair," said Sam. "Sorry?" "In math, that's what we call two numbers each of which is equal to the sum of the divisors of the other. The smallest ones, 220 and 284, were regarded by the Pythagoreans as symbols of true friendship.

But of Marcus Felstead there was no sign. Pascoe had pulled into the Club car park close behind the Evanses' car. He had not got out immediately, but sat and watched the broad Welshman and his wife pick their way carefully over the already frosted surface towards the club-house.

Bernard, it would have been a kindness to warn me that PC Plod was going to pay a visit.

I'm sorry," repeated Dree sincerely. "That's OK. Don't think of it as losing a sister-in-law, think of it as gaining a parasite. This soup's delicious. I may sting you for another bowlful.

The trouble is they don't write the lines I want to use any more.

Buses and trains both set you thinking, but not in the same way. Trains give you a rhythm, sent you into dreams, cut you off from reality. Buses were always stopping and starting; traffic, road-junctions, lights; and of course, bus-stops. The world you passed through was observable. And real. So was the world inside your head. Buses were good places to worry on.

a politician's capacity to ignore contradictory evidence

Fidler himself was a personable young man who'd been a New Labor MP till "the sheer meaningless gab of it" had driven him to resign and spend more time with his money by becoming a TV personality.

How come you still go on about your religion even after you gave it up?'...'It would be truer to say it gave me up, or rather it directed me to another path. But I still need it to tell me who I am. What about you Sam? Perhaps you are one of the lucky ones who are so sure who they are that external help isn't necessary.

For the first time, she felt she'd laid a glove on Doll Trapp. 'Well, you really are full of surprises,' she said. 'Interesting theory. I'd be careful who you share it with. Now, where was I?' That

That was Wield, a mind for all seasons. In Pascoe's opinion he was one of the best cops in Mid-Yorkshire, if not in the whole country. Sticking at sergeant had been his own choice, at first because he didn't want his gayness to become a promotion issue, and latterly, since setting up home with Edwin Digweed, because he had no desire to take any step which might disturb his domestic happiness. In an unprejudiced society, he'd have been Commissioner by now, thought Pascoe.

I've a mate in the Middlesbrough mob," said Wield. "I'll give him a ring later when they've had time to get things sorted. As for the pistol, don't underestimate them. Close range, one of them gas guns can put a pellet through your eye right into your brain.

tyro psychiatrist who provided the topic for a great deal of their conversation.

He was some kind of crusader.