People Who Eat Darkness: The True Story Of A Young Woman Who Vanished From The Streets Of Tokyo--and The Evil That Swallowed Her Up Quotes
"Life here means never taking life for granted, never not noticing."
"The only difference between being a British Airways hostess and being at Casablanca was the altitude."
"It’s not like people sat there saying, ‘Show us your tits’ and ‘How much d’you charge?’ It’s very different from that."
"Breast talk becomes a signal that the time for play has just begun."
"The one thing the hostess bars are not about is sex."
"In Japan, you became a citizen of a new nation—that of the gaijin, the foreigner."
"You made him believe that he was the most wonderful, most important man in the world, that you longed to jump into his bed."
"But she’d be stuck in the hotel, constantly jet-lagged and really not able to go out and enjoy the life and culture and food because she was knackered."
"He said, ‘I love being family,’ as we all sat there together. I’ll never forget it."
"In Tokyo, even in its red-light district, I felt a lot safer than in New York."
"It was a fantasy that, by the consent of all concerned, was kept alive only for the evening and only within the club."
"The job of being a hostess truly was confined to the inside of a hostess club."
"If the job of being a hostess truly was confined to the inside of a hostess club, Lucie Blackman would be alive."
"The secret of success in hostessing was to build up a stable of loyal customers."
"It is obviously not the job of my dreams, but it’s so easy."
"I have such pain in my stomach—a real physical symptom of feeling absolutely crushed."
"I feel like I’m reeling & I don’t know what to do."
"We both felt that we’d got through the rubbish bit and that it was going to be fine now."
"At no point back then did I allow myself to think that Lucie might no longer be alive. I couldn’t contemplate that. Everything would have just stopped."
"If you are a parent, if you have a very close relationship with your child, then maybe you have some idea of what I am going through."
"She couldn’t tell a story in under eighty thousand words—it was impossible for her."
"I feel as if I am completely losing my sense of reality with all this."
"You know how sometimes you have a nightmare, dreaming of some terrible thing happening to you? And you know the relief when you wake up, wipe the sweat off your face and think, ‘I’m glad that was just a dream’? My situation is reversed."
"It was as if she had been swallowed up by a hole in the ground."
"It breaks my heart. My most loving daughter, so full of life that she lights up a room."
"But this could have been some kind of elaborate trap."
"We will never give up looking for Lucie and we will never take no for an answer."
"I didn’t feel angry. I just felt as if I was falling into an abyss—no lifeline and no hope."
"I was at this time becoming aware of the apparent lack of concern that Tim seemed to exhibit concerning this whole difficult situation."
"I think most of all is the fear that in ten, twenty years’ time, even five years’ time, I’m going to still be here, still looking."
"No matter what you do there, you’re a freak, aren’t you? People are going to stare at you anyway, so you can stop worrying about it and let your hair down."
"I thought that he must be on coke or speed or something, although he wasn’t."
"As soon as I saw the place, I thought, ‘What am I doing here?’"
"I drank it because that was the kind of thing I did then—I was into being tough."
"I remember thinking, ‘How do I feel?’ and trying to work out what exactly had happened to me."
"The girls are trying to get money, with no intention of giving anything back."
"I thought I’d understood the rules, but I hadn’t."
"Japan has the cuddliest police in the world."
"It wasn’t until years later that I realized."
"In thinking about such things, he felt the weight of a stone on the top of his head."
"He behaved like an adult, he played around like an adult, and that was so unusual, so impressive."
"There were fifteen thousand items there. It was the biggest room we had available to us."
"Many of the rights regarded as fundamental in British and American justice are unavailable to the suspect in Japan."
"The police’s overwhelming power over those in their custody, such crude measures are rarely necessary."
"Everything else, including physical evidence, is secondary."
"We require proof beyond an unreasonable doubt."
"Japanese detectives, by and large, are calm, polite, detached, insistent, and relentless."
"We couldn’t make him face the camera. If you forced his chin up, for example, that might be taken to be torture."
"The formal legal system in Japan provides detectives with so many advantages that they rarely need to resort to obviously illegal tactics."
"The reasoning and impulses that led to a crime must be proved in court; they are a crucial factor in determining a convicted criminal’s sentence."
"The saddest thing of all is that I never really knew Lucie as a person."
"I love the respect that everyone has for one another. It’s humbling to see that."
"It’s just ridiculous, so ridiculous. Obviously we were devastated, but what the hell can you do about it?"
"The message was clear enough: please leave us alone for a while."
"There was no way that her ashes were going to be divided too. I felt very strongly about that."
"The sensation was accentuated by the absence from the church of Lucie herself."
"I will never feel her loving arms around my neck and feel warm breath as she tells me she loves me."
"The vast majority of Japan’s criminal trials do not resemble fights, battles, or sporting events, as the adversarial logic of its laws seems to prescribe, but rather ‘ceremonies’ or ‘empty shells,’ devoid of even minor disagreements."
"The terrible, terrible acts played out on my beautiful girl are acts of a disgusting creature, a filthy animal preying on beauty and vulnerability."
"These despicable crimes against us must receive the absolute maximum penalty, and longest possible sentence."
"The eyes of the world believe the charge should be murder—the sentence death."
"In public, I was very supportive of Dad’s decision. In fact, I didn’t support it at all."
"Lucie’s loyal family and friends are sickened by Tim Blackman’s utter betrayal."
"Your behavior is not healthy sexual behavior, but a filthy crime."
"You treated these women as sexual objects to satisfy your lust."
"My worst fears have come true. As for my darling Lucie, I miss you so much."
"People were either coldly indifferent or intrusively curious."
"The stresses generated by the case were centrifugal: they forced people apart rather than bringing them together."
"The Ridgways shared Tim’s loss exactly, and despite repeated blandishments from Obara’s lawyer, they consistently rejected the same offer of money."
"People are afraid of stories like Lucie’s, stories about meaningless, brutal, premature death, but most of them cannot own up to their fear."
"There is no right and wrong to loss, to grief. The pain is circular; it is its own fulfilment."
"The most he could hope for was to contain the loss and prevent it from overwhelming everything else in his life."
"The thought of opening the bag and sifting through its slimy contents made him feel that he was unraveling."
"It was hard to see that I’d ever, ever come out on the other side."
"The day she died is the worst, and I like to spend it sailing out in the Solent."
"To violate the dignity of so many victims, using drugs, in order to satisfy his lust, is unprecedented and extremely evil."
"There are no extenuating circumstances whatsoever for acts based on determined and twisted motives."
"There was no satisfaction that could be imagined, only greater and lesser degrees of humiliation and pain."