Colin Cotterill Quotes & Sayings

I'm left doing all the unskilled labor myself, which is exactly when you realize there's nothing unskilled about labor. — Colin Cotterill

So, there it was in a nutshell. Poverty led him to religion, religion to education, education to lust, lust to communism. And Communism had brought him back full circle to poverty. — Colin Cotterill

Forget the planet, save the garden. — Colin Cotterill

If nothing else, my analysis of George W.'s oratory style had taught me that a sincere countenance and a confident stance were sufficient to distract your audience from the fact that you were talking rubbish. — Colin Cotterill

Socialism had somehow made time more flexible. There were often situations when 1 PM and 5 PM were interchangeable. — Colin Cotterill

A hero without faults is like an omelet without little bits of eggshell in it. — Colin Cotterill

Honesty can be a dirty gift. — Colin Cotterill

He often talked to himself when he was overwhelmed with fear. He saw it as a more dignified reaction than wetting himself. And — Colin Cotterill

Fear helps us survive. I've spent a larger portion of my life being afraid than I have being in control. But, here I am. Forget this escape idea, son. It won't help you or your family. Play the game. Find a tall tree somewhere. A tree that's survived all the coups and massacres of history. Go to that tree and dig a hole near its roots and bury your pride there. — Colin Cotterill

His jacket was a little too large and his choice of tie made you think he didn't have a wife at home, at least not a fully sighted one. — Colin Cotterill

Dipping a cockroach in ink and having it scamper around the page would have left more legible traces to the average reader. — Colin Cotterill

Concentrate on the small things and do them well. — Colin Cotterill

The woman's brain has two hemispheres," she slurred. "One for loving, one for hating. They can operate quite competently at the same time. — Colin Cotterill

I'm sure he doesn't see it as aimless. We all have different goals. His are achievable. — Colin Cotterill

A good communist," the man had said, "does not let go of the plough halfway across the paddy and leave the buffalo to find its own direction. He eats with her, tends to her injuries, and sleeps with her until the job is done." Siri had resisted the temptation to spread the word that the Party was advocating bestiality. — Colin Cotterill

Chom. Don't you have an urge to see justice done?" "It's not nearly as strong as my urge to reach forty with a complete set of limbs. — Colin Cotterill

When did we get too old for this, Daeng? What happened to those days when we were somersaulting through the air with a cutlass in each hand taking out the enemy twenty at a time?"

"I don't think that was us, Love. That was Bruce Lee. — Colin Cotterill

All right, here comes the philosophy. You can leave if you like but I suggest you stick it out. You don't measure your own success against the size or volume of the effect you're having. You gauge it from the difference you make to the subject you're working on. Is leading an army that wins a war really that much more satisfying than teaching a four-year-old to ride a bicycle? At our age," she said, "you go for the small things and you do them as well as you can." In the back of the pony trap, squashed beside his two large boxes, Siri still felt Daeng's lip prints on his cheek and heard her whisper, "Go for the small things and do them well." It would be his new mantra. Forget the planet, save the garden. — Colin Cotterill

Sarcasm," he said, "is like throwing a stick at your enemy when you've run out of bullets." Siri — Colin Cotterill

May I ask how your revolution's going?
Revolutions always go more smoothly around a campfire in the jungle than they do in real life. — Colin Cotterill

The least urgent souls on earth with a thousand obstacles and superstitions to interfere with the accomplishment of work. — Colin Cotterill

It takes it out of you, writing with heart. And it was just for me really. Sort of a confirmation to myself that my inner diva can still make love to the keyboard when she's in the mood. I have to keep her roped and gagged when I'm writing for the newspapers. They don't like her at all. They don't want love. They want a quick tryst in a motel room that's forgotten in a few hours. — Colin Cotterill

Encounters with the living always drained him more than those with the dead. — Colin Cotterill

More panic. More emergencies and disasters. Soon, emergencies fell into a sort of natural ranking: drop-everything emergencies, do-what-you-can emergencies, and you'll just-have-to-wait emergencies. Disasters, too, had their own ratings: unavoidable, did-the-best-we-could, my fault/your fault. Then there were godlike moments when a decision had to be made as to who most deserved to die. By the afternoon of her second day, Dtui wondered whether her heart had shrunk. She felt less. People had become less human. Death had become less of a tragedy. Her patients weren't blacksmiths or housewives, they were percentages. "With this little skill and this little pharmaceutical backup, this patient - let's call her number seven - has a forty percent chance of survival." It amazed and saddened her that, in order to do her job properly, she had to stop caring. — Colin Cotterill

Yes, Siri. A dedicated socialist plunges headfirst into the troubled waters without testing the depth." "Isn't he likely to bump his head on the bottom?" Siri asked. — Colin Cotterill

the overriding thought in my mind is that I didn't have the foresight to say goodbye or thank you to the people I love. That sounds corny, I know, but what's wrong with corny? It has its place. — Colin Cotterill

As Siri walked along that oh-so-noisy riverbank on his way to work, he saw a pelican gliding above the surface of the water. It was a marvelous bird, proud and resourceful, and he imagined how it would taste with a little chili paste and fresh yams. Hungry people made poor environmentalists. — Colin Cotterill

He put his hand on his forehead and scoured the French department of his memory for a word. He knew it was in there. He'd put it in almost fifty years before and hadn't had cause to remove it. But for the life of him he couldn't find it. — Colin Cotterill

Honesty can be a dirty gift. It can muddy a sparkling stream of memories. — Colin Cotterill

Siri let out a silent puff of air. If he'd had a wife like this he would certainly have shot her long ago. — Colin Cotterill

I dreamed the world was an awful place," he said.
"It wasn't a dream," she told him. — Colin Cotterill

He never tired of watching her breathe. Every night spent beside her was an honour. — Colin Cotterill

You'd then drive your vehicle to a tree, beneath which the examiner sat. He or she would ask you to park. If you managed to do so without knocking over the tree or hitting the examiner, you had a license. — Colin Cotterill

Closed my eyes and diverted my mind from the awful sounds by thinking about language. I'd always thought of it as a friend. It's guided me through life and shown me new directions. Each new language I learned added to me. I became richer. But a language you don't know, sir, that is one mean, unfriendly son of a bitch. It's rude and secretive and it pushes you away, keeps you on the outside. And that's where I am now, on the outside. — Colin Cotterill

Do you suppose it all means something?
That we're being left clues?
Perhaps.
Then, no offense, but I fear they've badly overestimated us. — Colin Cotterill

There was nothing fake or added about him. He was all himself. — Colin Cotterill

You didn't have to travel very far out of Vientiane before the road turned to pebbles and potholes. Traveling in a truck was like falling down an endless flight of uneven steps in a coffin. — Colin Cotterill

Old man," she said. "Don't you want to prepare or something?"
"Prepare what?"
"Yourself. For death."
Siri laughed.
"Well, Bpoo. Let's see. If the Buddhists are right, I'm just on my way to the next incarnation. Unless there's a manual for how to behave correctly as a gnat I'm not sure how I'd prepare for that. If the Catholics are right, nothing short of an asbestos suit and a glass of iced water will help where I'm going. And if the communists are right, you do your best and when you're gone they put up a statue in your honor and the locals dry their laundry on it. So, if I'm going, you're the heir to today's legacy. — Colin Cotterill

Their version of rock-paper-scissors was elephant - fist, mouse - palm, and ant - little finger. The elephant crushed the mouse, the mouse squashed the ant, and the ant crawled up the elephant's trunk and paralyzed his brain. — Colin Cotterill

This skin, this hair, all this outside stuff. It isn't me. It's just my package. It's like the wrapper around the sweet; it isn't the sweet itself. What we really are is all inside the package. All our feelings. All our good moods and bad moods. All our ideas, our cleverness, our love, that's what a person really is. — Colin Cotterill

There was a Lao proverb that called teachers the engineers of the soul — Colin Cotterill

Human beings mistakenly believed alcohol was a disguise that stopped real life from recognizing them. In fact, it was just a temporary hiding hole ... — Colin Cotterill

I don't know. On my last junket I was caught in the middle of a massacre. The one before that I was tortured and left for dead. Joy and recreation seem to have escaped me somehow. — Colin Cotterill