Quotes from The Magpies

Mark Edwards ·  400 pages

Rating: (17.1K votes)


“You’re mad. Rats don’t try and get in through closed doors!”
― Mark Edwards, quote from The Magpies


“And soon they would be living together. They would be sharing a bedroom and he would live with her fragrance – as part of the background of his life – every day. Breath and hair and skin and sweat and all the atoms and particles”
― Mark Edwards, quote from The Magpies


“lay just beneath the surface of consciousness, jagged thoughts and dark music looping inside his head, preventing him from sinking into deeper sleep, where he wanted, and needed, to be.”
― Mark Edwards, quote from The Magpies


“In cities, after all, you are always within screaming distance of a psychopath.”
― Mark Edwards, quote from The Magpies


“You know what HTML really stands for? How to meet ladies.”
― Mark Edwards, quote from The Magpies



“She was both his compass and his map, and he would be lost on his own. Lost in the darkness.”
― Mark Edwards, quote from The Magpies


“Lemsip for her. While waiting for the kettle”
― Mark Edwards, quote from The Magpies


“would melt, liquid metal dripping to”
― Mark Edwards, quote from The Magpies


“cities, after all, you are always within screaming distance of a psychopath.”
― Mark Edwards, quote from The Magpies


“strength from her. He honestly didn’t know what”
― Mark Edwards, quote from The Magpies



“As soon as Kirsty walked into the living room, just behind Jamie, she knew something was wrong. There were no immediate tangible signs, but she could feel it. The atmosphere in the room felt wrong. There had been a shift in the air, a strange shape imprinted on the molecules that hung around them and made up the fabric of the room. She could smell it, this unwelcome odour. She felt like an animal, its hackles rising as it caught the scent of a stranger, an invader, an enemy encroaching on its territory.”
― Mark Edwards, quote from The Magpies


“For example, basil is great for curing stomach cramps, and sage is good for anxiety or depression.”
― Mark Edwards, quote from The Magpies


About the author

Mark Edwards
Born place: in Tunbridge Wells, The United Kingdom
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Wizards don't giggle," I said, hardly able to speak. "This is cackling.”
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― Oscar Wilde, quote from An Ideal Husband


“Is power like the vis viva and the quantite d’avancement? That is, is it conserved by the universe, or is it like shares of a stock, which may have great value one day, and be worthless the next? If power is like stock shares, then it follows that the immense sum thereof lately lost by B[olingbroke] has vanished like shadows in sunlight. For no matter how much wealth is lost in stock crashes, it never seems to turn up, but if power is conserved, then B’s must have gone somewhere. Where is it? Some say ‘twas scooped up by my Lord R, who hid it under a rock, lest my Lord M come from across the sea and snatch it away. My friends among the Whigs say that any power lost by a Tory is infallibly and insensibly distributed among all the people, but no matter how assiduously I search the lower rooms of the clink for B’s lost power, I cannot seem to find any there, which explodes that argument, for there are assuredly very many people in those dark salons. I propose a novel theory of power, which is inspired by . . . the engine for raising water by fire. As a mill makes flour, a loom makes cloth and a forge makes steel, so we are assured this engine shall make power. If the backers of this device speak truly, and I have no reason to deprecate their honesty, it proves that power is not a conserved quantity, for of such quantities, it is never possible to make more. The amount of power in the world, it follows, is ever increasing, and the rate of increase grows ever faster as more of these engines are built. A man who hordes power is therefore like a miser who sits on a heap of coins in a realm where the currency is being continually debased by the production of more coins than the market can bear. So that what was a great fortune, when first he raked it together, insensibly becomes a slag heap, and is found to be devoid of value. When at last he takes it to the marketplace to be spent. Thus my Lord B and his vaunted power hoard what is true of him is likely to be true of his lackeys, particularly his most base and slavish followers such as Mr. Charles White. This varmint has asserted that he owns me. He fancies that to own a man is to have power, yet he has got nothing by claiming to own me, while I who was supposed to be rendered powerless, am now writing for a Grub Street newspaper that is being perused by you, esteemed reader.”
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