Quotes from Christopher Brookmyre

and generally acquainted yourself with how tedious normal life is...

Perhaps it was a flaw inherent in the inventive mind to have vision but not foresight. Was it that so much concentration went into developing the idea that they could not see beyond it? Or was it an inhibition of the urge to see beyond that allowed them to develop ideas before they could be dismissed as folly?

Cotton equals death,' Lex told him. 'Cotton holds moisture against the skin and prevents you warming yourself. Trust me, I'm Canadian.

Your environment might help make you who you are, but what you do is all your own work.

They say what's for you won't go past you...

dagoes. With obscenity

I won't run away,' I said.

Simon had the awesome charisma of one who was born for greatness; if accompanied by the detestable arrogance of one who knew it.

When they drove past it on the motorway, he used to fantasise that his parents were about to turn their vehicle towards the car park and surprise him, say the boot was full of secretly packed luggage and they were heading off for a fortnight. When he had kids of his own, he'd told himself, he'd surprise them that way for real.

People seldom appreciated just how vital and positive raw hatred could be.

It was that he seemed...content to live in a wholly unexplored world.

it ranked alongside having Vaseline smeared liberally around your ring by a guy with a sack full of ferrets.

There hadn't come a day when she consciously decided, sod it, I'm past caring about clothes and hairstyles and make-up, but the evidence suggested she'd reached that position nonetheless.

doing them – and the amazing times you had on them – ought to be punishable by death. He has never said this to anyone though, so any time he gets offered, there is an awkward moment after he declines. The person offering clearly wonders whether he or she is being judged, and Parlabane reciprocally wonders whether he is too. With

Friends don't keep score,

Did you break into Anthony Mead's home?' 'I couldn't even tell you where that might be. Home Counties are all the one to me.' That was payback for Pine saying London, Los Angeles and Scotland. Really sticking it to them here. 'So you know his house is in the Home Counties.

I mean, I've known you a few days longer than she has and I don't fucking trust you." "Yeah, but you're paid not to trust me." "I wouldn't trust you in my spare time either.

Did you enjoy prison?' Mitchell asked. When they started asking really stupid questions was when you knew you'd truly pissed them off. 'Do you want to go back there?' 'To be honest, if it was between prison and connecting in Terminal Five at Heathrow, I'd choose T5. Just. So no.

There's five million people a year standing in the spot where we are now simply because this is the most famous painting in the world and therefore you just have to go and see it. Doesn't matter if you're more naturally drawn to landscapes, battle scenes, religious paintings, whatever: you have to go see the Mona Lisa, so it remains the most famous and popular painting in the world by virtue of being the most famous and popular painting in the world.

You don't get angry at the successful geniuses, you get angry at the successful mediocrities, and at the people who can't tell the fucking difference.

The hand doesn't need to be quicker than the eye if the eye is looking in the wrong place. Everything the magician does is about misleading the audience, everything: how he stands, where he looks, where he points and especially what he says. He will never be doing what he says he is doing, and if he tells you what he's about to do, he's lying.

Don't worry about it,' he said, noting my frown in response to him deciding on a final setting that seemed rougher than the last. 'We're not happy until you're not happy.

I don't compromise in order to fit in, and I'm not giving in to any arsehole who wants to make me feel I don't belong wherever I put myself.

Was that such a heresy, to admit that your love for your family wasn't sufficiently all-consuming as to extinguish all other desires?