Quotes from Charles Todd

There's a narrow line between love and hate sometimes, you know. And it can be crossed unwittingly.

But what kind of love? It had so many faces, so many names. Jealousy wove a thread around it, and envy, and fear. People died for love–and killed for it. And yet in itself it was indefinable, it wore whatever passions people brought to it, like a mountebank, with no reality of its own.

There's a beauty in birds on the wing, That stirs the heart and makes earthbound creatures Long for flight, but the larks above the battlefield Are silenced by the sounds of war. I have watched birds out at sea, Catching the wind, And longed to follow them, To some safe place far from here.

I lost my own daughter and I'll never have another. The hurt doesn't go away, no matter what you tell yourself. It's there day and night. I'd have killed any man who touched her. Why should I stand for such talk about another man's child, if I wouldn't have stood for it about my own?

When you watch the living force go out of a man's face as you fire your weapon into his unprotected body, it is very personal

Wishful thinking, that time might heal—it seldom healed anything, only making scars that were often tender to the touch, and ugly.

We walked away from all that was warm and dear and stood frightened in cold rain where the guns fired, and in the end, we died in pain, the black stinking mud our shroud, embraced at last not by living arms, but by the bones of those who before us died …

Time? Learning to forgive? To forgive yourself most of all? I can't cure you. But you may be able to cure yourself . . .

It isn't actually a question of guilt or innocence, is it? It's a matter of what the jury believes, once we've told them what evidence there is on either side. Given the proper evidence, we could probably convict God. Without it, Lucifer himself would walk free!

Sometimes love tries to do too much.

Love teaches you humility—patience—understanding.

We left the flat together. I expected– dreaded– Mrs. Hennessy popping out her door and asking who my young man was. "An escaped murderer, Mrs. Hennessy; my father will be horrified." But she didn't come out her door.

You can't save the world from itself. If people are intent on destroying themselves, they will. And sometimes they don't care if they bring others down with them. That's selfish but it's human nature.

No one ever stepped forward to protect me, Inspector. I wonder why I should feel any driving sense of duty to protect anyone else. Let me tell you something about love. It can be very cruel and very greedy. I've had done with it. And that has given me a freedom that I cherish.

Ye ken, it's the living and no' the dead who know the truth. The dead still believe it was worth dying for." ? Charles Todd, Racing the Devil

My mother had said to me afterward, "Your father is a fool." When I asked her why, she'd shrugged. "Men generally are," she'd retorted, and changed the subject.

You were one of the lucky ones," Dr. Fleming had told him not a fortnight ago. "But you can't see it as luck. In your view it's intolerable, your survival. You're punishing yourself because a whimsical God let you live. You think you've failed the dead, failed to protect them and keep them alive and bring them back home again. But no one could have done that, Ian. Don't you see? No one could have brought all of them through!

He won't tell me very much about his war. None of us do. It isn't something to share, you see. What we've seen, what we've done, ought to stay in France. But it didn't, it came home in our memories. They aren't memories we want you to know. You are the world we fought for. Safe and sane and not ugly. Better to keep it that way.

Hamish was like a trumpet in his head. "You will no' die. Do you hear me? You willna' die!" "You're already dead, Corporal. You can't stop me." Rutledge was finding it hard to concentrate. "You willna' die! I willna' let you die!

Sometimes you see briefly into someone's heart, and it becomes a bond between you that goes beyond friendship.

Gallantry," he often told his men, "is an act of great courage under fire, of bravery beyond the call of duty. But if it kills your comrades as well or puts the battle in jeopardy, then it is arrant pride and foolishness. Learn to know the difference.