In the inverted food chain of fame, it was the big beasts who were stalked and hunted

How could the death of someone you had never met affect you so?

The dead could only speak through the mouths of those left behind, and through the signs they left scattered behind them.

Couples tended to be of roughly equivalent personal attractiveness, though of course factors such as money often seemed to secure a partner of significantly better looks than oneself.

She wuz depressed. Yeah, she wuz on stuff for it. Like me. Sometimes it jus' takes you over. It's an illness, " she said, although she made the words sound like "it's uh nill

Hers was the kind of family that commissioned painters to immortalize its young: a background utterly alien to Strike, and one he had come to know like a dangerous foreign country.

In spite of her plainness that would have made wallflowers of other women, she radiated a great sense of self-importance.

Who was more conscious than the soldier of capricious fortune, of the random roll of the dice?

You ought to give up detecting and try fantasy writing, Strike

Ridiculous, " he said breathlessly. "You ought to give up detecting and try fantasy writing.

Don’t make a feller wait too long. A feller waiting on a gal can get ornery’er than a huntin’ dog that’s tree’d it’s squirrel.

I never stopped loving her, " he said. "I couldn’t let her go. Once the past gets you in its clutches, well, you’ve got to want to fight to be released. I never did. That was my mistake.

It's never over till it's really over in your mind...

The scientists who attack mainstream religion, rather than striving for peaceful coexistence with it, damage science, and also weaken the fight against fundamentalism.

I am not one of those people who will ever be comfortable mocking or making caricatures of the stereotypes attached to any community.

Some very poor countries run great vaccination systems, and some richer ones run terrible programs.

Angelina is my daughter and I am always wishing her the best.

Means to be means must always be within our reach, and so ahimsa is our supreme duty.

People like [Memoirs of a Woman Doctor], whether young people, young women, even critics - male critics - they were not shocked by it. Of course, some parts were cut.

Thank God for the rain to wash the trash off the sidewalk.