“It was the laughter of birthdays, of money found in an old pocket.”
― Ian Rankin, quote from Knots and Crosses
“His eyes beheld beauty not in reality but in the printed word. Standing in the waiting-room, he realized that in his life he had accepted secondary experience -- the experience of reading someone else's thoughts -- over real life. ”
― Ian Rankin, quote from Knots and Crosses
“...trapped in limbo, believing in a lack of belief, but not necessarily lacking the belief to believe.”
― Ian Rankin, quote from Knots and Crosses
“Rebus reminded himself to stop praying. Perhaps if he stopped praying, God would take the hint and stop being such a bastard to one of his few believers on this near-godforsaken planet.”
― Ian Rankin, quote from Knots and Crosses
“My father was a slave to capitalist ideology. He didn't know what he was doing."
"You mean you went to an expensive school?”
― Ian Rankin, quote from Knots and Crosses
“Was it all inevitable, John?" Reeve was pushing his fingers across the floor of the cell, seated on his haunches. I was lying on the mattress.
Yes," I said. "I think it was. Certainly, it's written that way. The end of the book is there before the beginning's hardly started.”
― Ian Rankin, quote from Knots and Crosses
“Often he declined invitations, because to accept meant that he had to dust off his brogues, iron a shirt, brush down his best suit, take a bath, and splash on some cologne. He had also to be affable, to drink and be merry, to talk to strangers with whom he had no inclination to talk and with whom he was not being paid to talk. In other words, he resented having to play the part of a normal human animal.”
― Ian Rankin, quote from Knots and Crosses
“Strangulation. It was a fearful way to go, wrestling, kicking your way towards oblivion, panic, the fretful sucking for air, and the killer behind you most likely, so that you faced the fear of something totally anonymous, a death without knowledge of who or why. Rebus had been taught methods of killing in the SAS. He knew what it felt like to have the garotte tighten on your neck, trusting to the opponent’s prevailing sanity. A fearful way to go.”
― Ian Rankin, quote from Knots and Crosses
“all eyes turned towards him, entered the”
― Ian Rankin, quote from Knots and Crosses
“Job, actually. I read it once a long time ago. It seems more frightening now though. The man who begins to doubt, who shouts out against his God, looking for a response, and who gets one. ‘God gave the world to the wicked,’ he says at one point, and ‘Why should I bother?’ at another.” “It sounds interesting. But he goes on bothering?” “Yes, that’s the incredible thing.”
― Ian Rankin, quote from Knots and Crosses
“He felt his arms ache and, looking down, saw that the girl had stopped struggling. There came that point, that sudden, blissful point, when it was useless to go on living, and when the mind and body came to accept that such was the case. That was a beautiful, peaceful moment, the most relaxed moment of one’s life.”
― Ian Rankin, quote from Knots and Crosses
“Fifteen years, and all he had to show were an amount of self-pity and a busted marriage with an innocent daughter hanging between them. It was more disgusting than sad.”
― Ian Rankin, quote from Knots and Crosses
“No sooner had he finished with a case than another two or three appeared in its place. What was the name of that creature? The Hydra, was it? That was what he was fighting. Every time he cut off a head, more popped into his in-tray. Coming back from a holiday was a nightmare. And now they were giving him rocks to push up hills as well.”
― Ian Rankin, quote from Knots and Crosses
“Ah, but it was not a nice world this, not a nice world at all. It was an Old Testament land that he found himself in, a land of barbarity and retribution.”
― Ian Rankin, quote from Knots and Crosses
“Poor girl. She would change. The idealism would vanish once she saw how hypocritical the whole game was, and what luxuries lay outside university. When she left, she’d want it all: the executive job in London, the flat, car, salary, wine-bar. She would chuck it all in for a slice of pie.”
― Ian Rankin, quote from Knots and Crosses
“Also, he was more discriminating now than he had been then, back in the old days when he would read a book to its bitter end whether he liked it or not. These days, a book he disliked was unlikely to last ten pages of his concentration.”
― Ian Rankin, quote from Knots and Crosses
“Rebus remembered that the premature withdrawal of the penis during intercourse for contraceptive reasons was often referred to as ‘getting off at Haymarket.”
― Ian Rankin, quote from Knots and Crosses
“There was a ring at the door. He did not answer. They would go away, and he would be alone again with his grief, his impotent anger, and his undusted possessions.”
― Ian Rankin, quote from Knots and Crosses
Ian Rankin
Born place: in Cardenden, Scotland
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“Yalnızca başlangıçtaki vesileye bakmakla yetinirseniz bir sevginin gücünü yanlış değerlendirirsiniz, aslında daha öncesindeki gerilime, ruhun bütün büyük sarsıntılarına zemin hazırlayan, yalnızlığın ve düş kırıklıklarının yarattığı o bomboş karanlığa bakmak gerekir. Yaşanmamış duygular burada birikerek aşırı ağırlaşır ve değeceğine inanılan ilk kişiyle karşılaşıldığında alabildiğine boşalır.”
― Stefan Zweig, quote from Burning Secret
“Casey glanced at her plate again, recalling the posters of her elementary school lunchroom: YOU ARE WHAT YOU EAT. So, how much you ate indicated the quantity of your desire. Walter was also implying that how quickly you got your food revealed the likelihood of achieving your goals. She was in fact terribly hungry, but she'd pretended to be otherwise to be ladylike and had moved away from the table to be agreeable, and now she'd continue to be hungry" (Free Food For Millionaires, p.92.)”
― Min Jin Lee, quote from Free Food for Millionaires
“Mr. Langton one day asked him [Samuel Johnson] how he had acquired so accurate a knowledge of Latin, in which, I believe, he was exceeded by no man of his time; he said, 'My master whipt me very well. Without that, Sir, I should have done nothing.' He told Mr. Langton, that while Hunter was flogging his boys unmercifully, he used to say, 'And this I do to save you from the gallows.' Johnson, upon all occasions, expressed his approbation of enforcing instruction by means of the rod. 'I would rather (said he) have the rod to be the general terrour to all, to make them learn, than tell a child, if you do thus, or thus, you will be more esteemed than your brothers or sisters. The rod produces an effect which terminates in itself. A child is afraid of being whipped, and gets his task, and there's an end on't; whereas, by exciting emulation and comparisons of superiority, you lay the foundation of lasting mischief; you make brothers and sisters hate each other.”
― James Boswell, quote from The Life of Samuel Johnson
“There are no coincidences. If something happens and we don't understand the reason, that doesn't mean there is no reason. It means that the reason will later be revealed, likely not in this life.”
― Jacquelyn Mitchard, quote from Cage of Stars
“He doesn’t like making others uncomfortable.”
-Helen to Sophia about Alistair”
― Elizabeth Hoyt, quote from To Beguile a Beast
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The Body Finder
The Pickwick PapersBookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.
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