Michael Robotham Quotes & Sayings

Loving children is easy. Keeping them is hard. — Michael Robotham

Everybody you work with has their own voice, and if you do your job well enough, even their closest friends or their partner of 40 years isn't going to recognise the fingerprints of a ghostwriter. — Michael Robotham

She is more memory than reality. She belongs to a time of teenage crushes, first kisses, crowded lecture halls and smoky pubs. Even if she had lived, we might have had nothing in common except the past. — Michael Robotham

I know the answer now, but I'm so frightened I've forgotten the question. — Michael Robotham

Gennia is eating and talking to Ruiz on the phone. Each time he takes a mouthful, he catches a whiff of his shirt, which stinks of failure and yesterday. — Michael Robotham

I normally sleep very well, but when I do have bad dreams, they always involve my children. — Michael Robotham

Fleetingly, unnervingly, I understand what he's saying but cannot accept a world that is so brutally black and white. Murder, rape and torture are the apparatus of terrorists, not of civilized societies. If we become like them, what hope do we have? — Michael Robotham

I've discovered the secret of revenge. Outlive the f
ers! I'll dance on their graves. — Michael Robotham

Writing is what I do. It's what makes me tick. — Michael Robotham

I don't know what else to tell you. I often think how different my life would have been - how much happier - if you'd been a part of it. One day. — Michael Robotham

Some people are born to suffer. It never stops for them, not for a second ... they are made for it - sustained by it. — Michael Robotham

It was the most important moment in human history, the telling of the first lie. That's what separates us from the other animals. It has nothing to do with humans thinking on a higher plane or having easily available credit. We lie to each other. We deliberately mislead. — Michael Robotham

He didn't lead anyone on, or make any promises. Instead he conveyed a sense of calm and equanimity, like a man who had banished from his life all superfluous sentiment, all longings and all patience for the nonessential. He was like Yoda, Buddha and the Gladiator all rolled into one. — Michael Robotham

Sometimes I wake at night and worry that I might have disappeared in my sleep. That's what happens when nobody cares about you. Bit by bit you begin to disappear until people look right through your chest and head like you're made of glass. It's not about love; it's about being forgotten. We only exist if others think about us. It is like that tree that falls in the forest with nobody around to hear it. Who the fuck cares except the birds? — Michael Robotham

For a moment something struggles inside her. Then her mind empties and she surrenders. Fighting fate is too difficult. She must save herself to fight whatever fate throws up. — Michael Robotham

I believe that if the story is fleshed out and the characters more believable, the reader is more likely to take the journey with them. In addition, the plot can be more complex. My characters are very real to me, and I want each of my characters to be different. — Michael Robotham

Here you can shoot the bad guys,' a mercenary says in Baghdad. 'In America we give them corporate bonuses. — Michael Robotham

It's strange, talking about love. I used to hate the word.
Hate is too strong. I was sick of reading about it in books, hearing it in songs, watching it in films. It seemed such a huge burden to place on another person - to love them; to give them something so unbelievably fragile and expect them not to break it or lose it or leave it behind on the No.96 bus. — Michael Robotham

A single, random, foolish event can often change a life - a chance meeting, or an accident or a moment of madness. But more often it happens by increments like a creeping tide, so slowly that we barely notice. My life was altered by a diagnosis. It was never going to be a death sentence, but it has robbed me by degrees. — Michael Robotham

I'm very fortunate to be doing what I dreamed of, what I love. So few people get that opportunity. So while people continue liking what I write, I'm going to happily continue. — Michael Robotham

There is a moment when all hope disappears, all pride is gone, all expectation, all faith, all desire. I own that moment. It belongs to me. That's when I hear the sound, the sound of a mind breaking. It's not a loud crack like when bones shatter or a spine fractures or a skull collapses. And it's not something soft and wet like a heart breaking. It's a sound that makes you wonder how much pain a person can endure; a sound that shatters memories and lets the past leak into the present; a sound so high that only the hounds of hell can hear it. Can you hear it? Someone is curled up in a tiny ball crying softly into an endless night. — Michael Robotham

If I become the man you want, I wouldn't be the man I am. — Michael Robotham

You know why I love dogs more than people?" she shouts, everything about her softer. "Feed them and pet them and they'll love you when no one else will. — Michael Robotham

....And let me tell you something about families they're overrated. They're a weakness. The leave you or get taken from you or they disappoint you. Families are a liability. — Michael Robotham

The cab drops Audie outside the Texas Children's Hospital. Money changes hands and the driver looks at the cash and suggests he deserves a tip. Audie says he should be nicer to his mother and gets a reply that no mother would approve of. pg.132 — Michael Robotham

I'd like to set a story in Australia, but I would need to feel confident my German and U.S. readers, for example, would stay with me. — Michael Robotham

I write books that will make 10 or 12 hours disappear, and hopefully they'll resonate with you for a few days, where you'll remember the characters and the story. That suits me fine; I am happy with that. — Michael Robotham

I've known since I was 12 that I wanted to write. My father was a teacher, and there were so many books around, it seemed natural to pick them up. — Michael Robotham

She could move Audie, who felt as though he was staring into the depths of a well. All he had to do was fall. — Michael Robotham

Don't say anything unless you can improve on the silence. — Michael Robotham

The hardest part of ghost writing other people's stories is capturing their voices so that it isn't you talking, it's them. — Michael Robotham

All of my novels are seeded in real life events, and 'The Wreckage' is no different. — Michael Robotham

That's the problem with folks nowadays. Nobody takes responsibility for their actions. Make a mistake and you pay for it. That's life. — Michael Robotham

Journalism took me around the world. I worked in London for ten years and reported on the collapse of the Soviet Union, the troubles in Northern Ireland, and the first Gulf War. — Michael Robotham

I have been visited by every shade of grief and know that it doesn't come in black or white — Michael Robotham

So when you start getting scared, remember that the longest night is only eight hours and the longest hour is only sixty minutes. Dawn is always going to come - unless you don't want it to. — Michael Robotham

Specialists debated whether to pull the plug, but Texas only executes people on death row, not when they're brain-dead, because it might mean culling most of their politicians. — Michael Robotham

Alcoholics don't have relationships-they take hostages. — Michael Robotham

Life is short. Love is vast. Live like there's no tomorrow. — Michael Robotham

I know it sounds foolishly old fashioned, but I'm stuck with this idea that there's something dignified and noble about facing your enemy and looking him in the eye before you thrust a saber in his heart. — Michael Robotham

She looked over a shoulder, a gesture he would never get over, a moment fixed in his mind - the perfection of her skin, the music in her laughter; her eyes brown in places that brown could only dream of reaching. And he knew at that precise moment that he would always yearn for Belita, whether they spent their lives together or if they parted that evening and he never saw her again. — Michael Robotham

Truth is a matter of semantics, whether we like it or not. — Michael Robotham

Muhammad Ali has a lot to answer for. When he lit the flame at the Atlanta Olympics there wasn't a dry eye on the planet. Why were we crying? Because a great sportsman had been reduced to this-a shuffling, mumbling, twitching cripple. A man who once danced like a butterfly now shook like blancmange.
We always remember sportsmen. When the body deserts a scientist like Stephan Hawking we figure that he'll be able to live in his mind, but a crippled athlete is like a bird with a broken wing. When you soar the heights the landing is harder. — Michael Robotham

A perfect hero is about as boring as a perfect marriage. — Michael Robotham

I'm very critical of crime novels that use gratuitous violence to shock readers when it isn't necessary. If that's all you have to offer as a writer, perhaps you're in the wrong job. — Michael Robotham

The cab driver is staring at me in his mirror. I'm talking to myself.
"The second sign of madness," I explain.
"What's the first one?"
"Killing lots of people and eating their genitals."
He laughs and sneaks another look at me. — Michael Robotham

Getting to know patients is what I do. I learn about their deepest fears and secrets. A professional relationship becomes a personal one. It can be no other way. (190) — Michael Robotham

I thought I knew everything about friendship and family: the happiness, simplicity and joy within them. But there is another side of devotion, a side which Samira understands. — Michael Robotham

One of the strange things about friendship is that time together isn't cancelled out by time apart. One doesn't erase the other or balance it on some invisible scale. You can spend a few hours with someone and they will change your life, or you can spend a lifetime with a person and remain unchanged. — Michael Robotham

Closing his eyes, he feels the weight of the angel as she straddles his thighs. She leans forward, her breath on his cheek, her lips close to his ear, whispering, 'Remember your promise. — Michael Robotham

Do you know that if you close your eyes really tightly, so you can see stars, when you open them again it's a brand new world. — Michael Robotham

What if I become a lawyer?' 'Please don't do that,' says Ruiz. 'Why not?' 'They're like monkeys who get dressed up and fling poo at each other. — Michael Robotham

I know I should have ignored her. I should have called. Many times I almost did. I got as far as picking up the phone. Sometimes I even dialed your parents' number but then I wondered what I'd say to you. We had left it too long. How would we ever get around the silence, which was like an elephant sitting in the room? — Michael Robotham

Audie was the cleverest man Moss had ever met. He was Yoda. He was Gandalf. He was Morpheus. Now he'd become a walking suicide note. — Michael Robotham

Why give me this life and then give me this disease? Why give me joy and beauty of you and Charlie and then snatch it away? It's like showing someone a glimpse of what life could be like and in the next breath telling them that it can never happen — Michael Robotham

Everyone thinks I'm so strong. They expect me to face autumns and winters like that and bitch-slap them down; make them come to heel. I'm not so strong. I only pretend. — Michael Robotham

I write entertainment. There are some books you read but don't inhale. There are books that will change your life. — Michael Robotham

For a man with no cows you talk a lot of bullshit, Ryan. — Michael Robotham

We get given our faces, thinks Audie, but we inherit our lives, our happiness and our unhappiness. Some get a lot, some get a little. Some savor every morsel and suck the marrow out of every bone. We take pleasure in the sound of rain, the smell of cut grass, the smiles of strangers, the feeling of dawn on a hot day. We learn things and realize we can never know more than we don't know. We catch love like a cold and cling to it like wreckage in a storm. — Michael Robotham

I used to say I would pay good money to forget most of my life. Now I want the memories back. — Michael Robotham

Sometimes friends do foolish things. My father told me that true friends are like gold coins. Ships are wrecked by storms and lie for hundreds of years on the ocean floor. Worms destroy the wood. Iron corrodes. Silver turns black but gold doesn't change in sea water. It loses none of its brilliance or colour. It comes up the same. It survives shipwrecks and time. — Michael Robotham

You can't go alone."
"He won't see me otherwise. I'll make an appointment. People don't get killed when they make an appointment. — Michael Robotham

Love and pain are not the same. But sometimes it feels like they should be. Love is put to test everyday. Pain is not. Yet the two of them are inseparable because true love cannot bear separation. — Michael Robotham

My other chore is to buy a tree- a thankless task. The only truly well-proportioned Christmas trees are the ones they use in advertisements. If you try and find one in real life you face inevitable disapointment. Your tree will lean to the left or the right. It will be too bushy at the base, or straggly at the top. Even if you do, by some miracle, find a perfect tree, if won't fit in the car and by the time you strap it to the rooftop and drive it home the branches are broken and twisted out of shape. You
wrestle it through the door, gagling on pine needles and sweating profusely, only to hear the maddening question from countless Christmases past: 'Is that really the best one you could find? — Michael Robotham

I'm so short I tread water in the kiddie pool. I need a ladder to get to the bottom bunk. I hit my head on the ground when I sneeze. I need a running start to reach the toilet. And no, I'm not related to Tom Cruise. — Michael Robotham

If I gave up sarcasm that would leave interpretive dance as my only way of communicating. — Michael Robotham

Jealousy is a terrible thing. I know all the psychological triggers. The fear of losing control, the fear of loss, the fear of abandonment, neglect and loneliness ... But the most destructive thing about jealousy is that it kills what it values-the love you want to save won't survive the constraints of jealousy. There is no entitlement. Love is either equal or a tragedy. — Michael Robotham

I normally write in the first person, and my narrators are as real to me as any of the people I have worked with. They live and breathe in my imagination. — Michael Robotham

Late afternoon he pulls up outside a white painted Baptist church with a wooden cross on the front wall above a sign that reads, JESUS DOESN'T NEED TO TWEET. pg 138 — Michael Robotham

Remember, the worst hour of your life only lasts for sixty minutes. (292) — Michael Robotham

Violence is inevitable in crime novels, but there are many different ways to tell a story. I use my characters' reactions to illustrate the worst moments rather than let readers witness them at first hand. — Michael Robotham

You're not supposed to have a favourite book - it's like children. — Michael Robotham

She's been used more often than a jailhouse condom. — Michael Robotham

You know its going to be a bad day when you are having a prostate examination and you feel both of your doctor's hands on your shoulders! — Michael Robotham

I often joke that I could write 'War and Peace' and make it sound like Geri Halliwell wrote it. — Michael Robotham

Love was an accident waiting to happen, he decided. It was like throwing a parachute out of a plane and jumping after it, convinced that you could catch it on the way down. He was falling but it didn't feel like a death plummet. — Michael Robotham

In the mid-nineties, I quit my job as a senior feature writer at 'The Mail' on Sunday in the U.K. and became a 'ghost writer,' collaborating with politicians, pop stars, psychologists, soldiers and sporting legends who needed help in penning their autobiographies. — Michael Robotham

Let me tell you what's more immoral. Doing nothing. Sitting back in your comfortable chair in your comfortable home thinking that just because you sponsor a child in Zambia you're doing enough. — Michael Robotham

I wasn't always a novelist. I began my writing career as a journalist, working on an afternoon newspaper in Sydney, Australia, doing the crime beat and court reporting. Having grown up in a small country town, I felt as though I had nothing to write about. — Michael Robotham

People who lose children have their hearts warped into weird shapes. Some try to deny it has happened. Some pretend it hasn't. Losing friends or parents is not the same. To lose a child is beyond comprehension. It defies biology. It contradicts the natural order of history and genealogy. It derails common sense. It violates time. It creates a huge, black, bottomless hole that swallows all hope. — Michael Robotham

Her eyes brown in places that brown could only dream of reaching. — Michael Robotham

Why do our parents have the ability to make us feel like children even when our hair is graying and we have a mortgage that feels like a Third World debt? (135) — Michael Robotham

At this time of year, when the temperature drops, I wear non-slip shoes, a woolen scarf and a permanent frown. Forget about global warming. As I get older the world gets colder. That's a fact. — Michael Robotham

People think it's easy to be cynical and pessimistic, but it's incredibly hard work. It's much easier to be hopeful. — Michael Robotham