Quote collection
100 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"The British regulatory system was revised, so that bigger profits were encouraged, which removed the option of big spending on programming. Quality just fell off a cliff, and all the old hands either left or were fired for being too expensive."
"For men, as they get bogged down with responsibilities, commitments, bureaucracy, it is a fantasy just to think of shedding everything literally, walking away with nothing at all, and just hitting the road."
"Sometimes if you want to know for sure whether the stove is hot, the only way to find out is to touch it."
"Evaluate. Long experience had taught me to evaluate and assess. When the unexpected gets dumped on you, don’t waste time. Don’t figure out how or why it happened. Don’t recriminate. Don’t figure out whose fault it is. Don’t work out how to avoid the same mistake next time. All of that you do later. If you survive."
"He had fallen out of the ugly tree, and hit every branch."
"I'd never believed in luck. Never had any cause to. Never relied on it, because I never could."
"I'm not a vagrant... I'm a hobo. Big difference."
"I was in television drama, which is a first cousin to the movies, and I trust myself to make the right decisions."
"The most sustained feat of imagination in mystery fiction today."
"I have three desks. One empty for paperwork, one for the internet and email, and one for the writing computer."
"It's a kind of zen question: if you write a book and no one reads it, is it really a book?"
"A handgun at two hundred feet is the same thing as crossing your fingers and making a wish."
"The key to thrillers is vicarious pleasure."
"Never forget a Favor, Never forgive a Slight!"
"I'm not afraid of death. Death's afraid of me."
"Intensely vivid characters, terrible crimes, and a brutal deep-frozen landscape all prove beyond a reasonable doubt that cold nurtures good and evil as readily as heat ... and that Giles Blunt is a really tremendous crime novelist."
"I went to college. West Point is technically a college."
"The thriller is not a recent invention. It probably goes back to the dawn of storytelling."
"They found out about him in July and stayed angry all through August. They tried to kill him in September. It was way too soon. They weren't ready. The attempt was a failure. It could have been a disaster, but it was actually a miracle. Because nobody noticed."
"British crime stories tend to be very internal, psychological, claustrophobic, very limited in terms of geography."