Mystery Man

If you dwell in the darkness, you can see in the dark and look into the light. But in choosing the darkness, you know you are destined to walk alone.

Bookselling is like prostitution, you sell your wares, you close your eyes, and you never fall in love with the clients. You also keep your fingers crossed that they won't ask for anything perverted.

He was the type of man women said they hated, they absolutely hated, they absolutely and categorically hated, and then they went to bed with him. I was the type of man women said they hated, and then they went home.

Serial Killer Week got off to an inauspicious start when the opening wine and bean evening was invaded by a former prisoner who misinterpreted the poster, but he was at least able to give us the professional's view of the genre.

And nobody has ever gotten emotional over a James Patterson novel.

Life is too short to spend an hour and a half on a mystery that will ultimately be solved by a cat.

Also, I have a mornid fear of rates, and mice, and nettles and wasps and jagged cans and rotting food and damp newspapers and the unemployed.

I could have volunteered everything I had discovered during the course of The Case of the Dancing Jews at any point during the eight hours he kept me in a cold police cell without access to a lawyer or Twix...

Having to say 'so and so can't be with us tonight, but I would like to accept this murder charge on his behalf' would have been rather anticlimactic.

You need your thumbs. They are one reason cats can't make omelettes.

Books are precious things, and cannot be selected like tinned peas in Tesco.

and i especially don´t like talking to old people. i don´t like having to shout to be heard. i don´t like their turned milk and their soft biscuits. i don´t like their fishy cats and youth dew perfume that smells of mothballs. i don´t like that they grown every time they sit down or stand up., or how loud they have their tv and how much they complain about what´s on tv or how they boast about having their own teeth or why i should be interested in the fact that they can still spell when they´re 89 years old. i´m with the eskimos putting their useless grandparents on ice floes and waving goodbye. this may be monstrous slander on eskimos. it could just as easily be some other tribe with access to large bodies of ice, or just plain water, with crocodiles.

Anything with the word 'Tesco' or 'Weight Watchers' on the label should be viewed with some suspicion.

By pressing our faces against the wire we could clearly see, nestling amongst torn bin liners, a red-splashed pot of discarded paint. I immediately directed Jeff to climb the fence to retrieve it. I would have done it myself, but my back had not been good for several days, mostly through shifting unsold copies of Hannibal Rising from the front of the shop to the rear. Also, I have a morbid fear of rats, and mice, and nettles and wasps and jagged cans and rotting food and damp newspapers and the unemployed.

Coffee is coffee to me, I don't mind what country it comes from, who picks it or under what conditions, and I really don't give a damn who serves it or what they're getting paid as long as they get it right.