Not Dead Enough Quotes
"The world of Sussex Police is central to my Roy Grace series of novels, and I am indebted to the many officers and support staff there who make me so welcome and give me so much help."
"She studied the petrol pump as if it was some extraterrestrial creature put on Planet Earth to intimidate her, which was how she felt about most petrol pumps."
"Marlon did what he always did, which was to swim around and around his glass bowl, circumnavigating his world with the tireless determination of an explorer heading into yet another uncharted continent."
"In Italy for thirty years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder, bloodshed – but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance."
"Life must be lived forward, but it can only be understood backwards."
"The views from up here made you feel you were almost standing on top of the world."
"She knew the relationship wasn’t going anywhere, just could not see him giving up all that he had for her – even though he had ended a previous marriage, one from which he had two children."
"Missing you! Totally adore you! Feeling dangerously horny! XXXX"
"Not Katie? Not my darling – my darling Katie . . ."
"I don’t believe this! Please tell me it’s not true!"
"I’ve just read a really crap script, ‘Hand of Death. It’s dross."
"You ought to donate your rubbish music collection to it."
"What the caterpillar calls the end of the world, the master calls the butterfly."
"Did you and your wife indulge in any unusual sexual practices?"
"I want to know what’s happened, Detective – Super – Super whatever you said your name was."
"Why can’t you answer one simple question?"
"His head spinning, he stepped out into the searing sunlight of Prince Albert Street, opposite the town hall, totally confused by the conversation he had just had, and wondering what he was going to do next."
"But the response he had got from Sophie was so utterly bizarre."
"Then, like a massive, unseen wave, grief flooded up inside him and drew him down, into a void of darkness, as if there had been a sudden, instant, total eclipse of the sun and all the sounds of the city around him."
"It was a crucible in which human beings were deconstructed, back almost, it seemed sometimes, to their base elements."
"Despite his revulsion, Grace was fascinated."
"When Katie’s body was, finally, completely naked, and she had taken and logged scrapings from under all the nails, Nadiuska turned her attention to the marks on the dead woman’s neck."
"‘The pressure on the veins in the neck was enough to compress them, but not the arteries,’ Nadiuska explained, more loudly now, as if for the benefit of both Roy and everyone else in the room."
"Sophie’s ciabatta sat on her desk, going cold and making its paper wrapper soggy."
"He tried to focus his thoughts. This woman had been killed by someone, almost certainly murdered. She deserved more than a distracted cop, fixated on a possible sighting of his long-gone wife."
"Using a large soup ladle, Cleo removed the blood that had drained into Katie’s midriff, spoonful by spoonful, pouring it into the gully below."
"Did you get all your bloody education from watching movies? Didn’t you ever learn any history?"
"People blink more times a minute when they are telling the truth than when they are lying."
"It’s a fact that liars sit very still – they have to think harder than people telling the truth – and when we think harder we are stiller."
"The only people who didn’t seem to go on holiday, in the same way that they didn’t stick to conventional office hours, were criminals."
"Unlike this current August heatwave here in Brighton, which brought even more holidaymakers and trippers flooding into the city than usual."
"If you want to really hurt someone, don’t kill them, that only hurts for a short time. It’s much better to kill the thing they love. Because that will hurt them forever."
"Perspective. Everything was about perspective. One man’s darkness was another man’s daylight."
"Chris Tarrant repeated the question. ‘John, you have sixty-four thousand pounds.’ He paused and held the cheque in the air for all to see. Then he put it down again. ‘For one hundred and twenty-five thousand pounds, where is the resort of Monastir? Is it a) Tunisia, b) Kenya, c) Egypt or d) Morocco?’"
"‘Well,’ the man said. ‘I don’t think it’s Kenya.’"
"‘You still have two lifelines,’ Chris Tarrant said."
"When he was a child growing up here, Brighton and Hove had been two separate towns, each of them shabby in their own very different way."
"Now the two towns were enshrined together, forever, as the City of Brighton and Hove."
"What he hated was seeing his home city, which he so loved, being permanently blighted by whatever mediocrity went on behind the walls of that planning department."
"‘How are you?’ Sophie asked imploringly. ‘What’s happened? How—?’"
"‘Try it on,’ he said sharply, putting the package on the tray, ignoring her questions."
"‘You want to watch television or open the gift I’ve bought you?’ he said."
"I’m really sorry, OK? I’m just surprised you’re here."
"‘Of course you can fucking breathe.’ His voice was muzzy, distorted."
"‘I can’t breathe,’ she said, panicking, claustrophobia gripping her, her voice muffled."
"‘You won’t ever hurt me, will you, Roy?’ she asked plaintively."
"So, how was your day? Or would you like to sleep?"
"The air was already warming up and it promised to be another blistering summer day."
"I don’t want workmen coming in. Not a good idea. Not a good idea at all."
"She was being pulled back, away from Ben, reclaimed by the ocean as if she had merely been presented for a brief inspection."
"The small black Toyota Prius, running on just its electric motor, glided silently through the darkness behind her."
"Would he even recognize Sandy if he saw her? There were days when he could no longer recall her face without looking at her photograph, as if time, whether he liked it or not, was slowly erasing her from his memory."
"Was Sandy living her life somewhere in this vast open landscape below him? An anonymous German hausfrau whose background no one had ever questioned?"
"He wanted to look – and smell – the way she might remember him."
"In a world in which Alison Vosper prowled was not normal."
"She had taken a dislike to him, for reasons he could not figure out."
"What on earth could he hope to achieve in just one day?"
"Was it tiredness, or thirst, or just the enormity of being here?"
"It’s pretty hard to think there is much wrong with the world!"
"He was having a problem keeping his eyes open."
"How many gazillion towns and cities in the world were there where she might be?"
"I’m just driving past Adolf Hitler’s watering hole," Grace informed Branson.
"The Bierkeller where Hitler was thrown out from, because he did not pay his bill!" he said. "A rumour, you know!"
"Did you remember to feed Marlon?" Grace asked. "Marlon?" "The goldfish."
"It’s good of you to give up time on a Sunday," she said.
"It got me out of a barbecue at my girlfriend’s parents," he said. "That’s the downside of this work. I can’t cope with barbecues since I started working here."
"I suddenly remembered we’d left the body out. I thought, with this heat, it ought to go in a fridge."
"Fucking brilliant!" he said out loud, unable to control his excitement.
"Living doesn’t do you any good," he replied. "It kills us all."
"She had her eyes off him for less than sixty seconds, but that was more than enough for his hand to shoot out, grab the key, press it into the soft wax in the tin concealed in the palm of his hand and return it to the table."
"It must be nice to work in a room like this, he thought, in this calm oasis, away from the cramped, grotty spaces of Sussex House."
"Some years ago, because of her mood swings, a wit had nicknamed Alison Vosper ‘no. 27’, after a sweet-and-sour dish on the local Chinese takeaway menu, and it had stuck."
"‘Apologies, Roy,’ she said. ‘Been reading this bloody EU directive on standardization of the treatment of asylum seekers who commit crimes. Didn’t want to lose my thread. What bloody rubbish this is!’"
"When Abraham Lincoln gave that speech, it led to the most sacrosanct principles in the world, freedom and democracy, becoming enshrined in the American Constitution."
"That speech was less than three hundred words long. Do you know how long the European directive on the size of cabbages is? Sixty-five thousand words long!"
"Unless you feel in particular need of going out for a disappointment."
"‘I don’t think I asked you how Germany went. Did you find your wife? Have a cosy reunion?’ ‘You did ask, about five times.’"
"How about we have a meal tonight and I’ll give you the full low down?"
"‘I’m very hurt and I’m very angry with you, Roy.’ ‘I like it when you are angry,’ he said."
"You’ve no right to treat my officer like this. Get me the hospital manager. NOW!"
"This young woman is a heroine. She was injured performing an act of supreme bravery in the line of duty."
"‘What the hell are you doing in this ward?’ ‘Not really.’"
"It’s probably nothing, but the paper says you’ve asked people to be vigilant and report anything suspicious?"
"Well, his behaviour was very erratic. He shouted at the receptionist, for instance."
"I’m a bit of a crime fiction addict – I love reading forensic crime novels, when I get the time – and watch programmes like CSI on television."
"‘It was an infected wound in his hand.’ ‘From what?’ ‘Well, he said he had shut it in a door, but it didn’t look like that to me.’"
"‘You are not allowed to use mobile phones in here. And you’ve no right to take photographs.’ ‘You’ve no right to treat my officer like this. Get me the hospital manager. NOW!’"
"Yet he approached each cadaver with the same, almost boyish enthusiasm, as if it were his first."
"She was already dead when she went into the water."
"Roy Grace made a mental note to never again find himself closeted with Norman Potting in a small room on a hot day."
"I’m here to help you with your inquiries in finding the killer of my darling Katie. I don’t think that question is relevant."
"We were going to spend the rest of our lives together – why on earth would I have killed her?"
"I often wonder if it’s even worth going on holiday, because of all the bloody paperwork you have to clear before you go, and the stuff that’s waiting when you come back."
"Despite the fact that he had been married to Katie for only a few months, he suddenly felt desperately lonely. Very lost."
"There’s some fancy-looking tottie on there. Phwwoaaah!"
"I need some things. My jacket – wallet – I – please let me put a jacket on."
"It seemed that half his world had been ripped away from him and the other half was turning against him."
"This was all a bad dream and some time soon he was going to wake up."
"We don’t have twenty-four-hour room service."
"We have reason to believe that Mr Bishop has not been telling the complete truth."