Robert Galbraith Quotes & Sayings

Lightning doesn't strike twice. — Robert Galbraith

He liked Robin; he was grateful to her; he was even (after this morning) impressed by her; but, having normal sight and an unimpaired libido, he was also reminded every day she bent over the computer monitor that she was a very sexy girl. — Robert Galbraith

Why complicate your life when it did not need complicating, when you had a choice? — Robert Galbraith

And then, at last, the frenzy wore itself into staleness, and even the journalist had nothing left to say, but that too much had been said already. — Robert Galbraith

A vast unfocused rage rose in her, against men who considered displays of emotion a delicious open door; men who ogled your breasts under the pretense of scanning the wine shelves; men for whom your mere physical presence constituted a lubricious invitation. Her — Robert Galbraith

Yet he liked her face. He liked her voice. He liked being around her. — Robert Galbraith

Leda, Lula and Rochelle had not been women like Lucy, or his Aunt Joan; they had not taken every reasonable precaution against violence or chance; they had not tethered themselves to life with mortgages and voluntary work, safe husbands and clean-faced dependants: their deaths, therefore, were not classed as "tragic," in the same way as those of staid and respectable housewives. — Robert Galbraith

Holly was playing the concerned relative, the devoted sister, and if it was a ham performance Robin was experienced enough, now, to know that there were usually nuggets of truth to be sifted from even the most obvious dross. — Robert Galbraith

He had never been able to understand the assumption of intimacy fans felt with those they had never met. — Robert Galbraith

No milk, gone out for breakfast, then to Hamleys, want to beat crowds. PS Know who killed Quine. — Robert Galbraith

Strike registered the pronounced asymmetry of his pale blue eyes, one of which was a good centimeter higher than the other. It gave him an oddly vulnerable look, as though he had been finished in a hurry. — Robert Galbraith

And that woman was going to marry Matthew! Matthew, who had been banking on her working in human resources, with a nice salary to complement his own, who sulked and bitched about her long, unpredictable hours and her lousy paycheck . . . couldn't she see what a stupid bloody thing she was doing? Why the fuck had she put that ring back on? Hadn't she tasted freedom on that drive up to Barrow, which Strike looked back on with a fondness that discomposed him?

She's making a fucking huge mistake, that's all. — Robert Galbraith

Women, in his experience, often expected you to understand that it was a measure of how much they loved you that they tried their damnedest to change you. — Robert Galbraith

Erudite, for a woman who confuses "you're" and "your" and goes in for random capitalisation.' 'We can't all be literary geniuses,' said Robin reproachfully. 'Thank Christ for that, from all I'm hearing about them. — Robert Galbraith

It's that wounded-poet crap, that soul-pain shit, that too-much-of-a-tortured-genius-to-wash bollocks. Brush your teeth, you little bastard. You're not fucking Byron. — Robert Galbraith

I said that the greatest female writers, with almost no exceptions, have been childless. A fact. And I have said that women generally, by virtue of their desire to mother, are incapable of the necessarily single-minded focus anyone must bring to the creation of literature, true literature. I don't retract a word. That is a fact. — Robert Galbraith

Strike was used to playing archaeologist among the ruins of people's traumatised memories; — Robert Galbraith

The brutal intrusion of officialdom into private devastation. — Robert Galbraith

Popularity's overrated. — Robert Galbraith

Sixteen unseeing stone of disheveled male slammed into her; Robin was knocked off her feet and catapulted backwards, handbag flying, arms windmilling, towards the void beyond the lethal staircase. — Robert Galbraith

He was not a man who told himself comfortable lies. — Robert Galbraith

Strike was becoming steadily more taciturn, his expression brooding. Robin wondered whether this was because he was hungry - he was a man who needed regular sustenance to maintain an equable mood - or for some darker reason. — Robert Galbraith

I do, said Robin in a ringing voice, looking straight into the eyes, not of her stony-faced new husband, but of the battered and bloodied man who had just sent her flowers crashing to the floor. — Robert Galbraith

If you want a lifetime of temporary alliances with peers who will glory in your every failure, write novels. Strike — Robert Galbraith

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

There was, she noticed, a fragment of frozen pea caught in the setting of her engagement ring. — Robert Galbraith

He knew more about the death of Lula Landry than he had ever meant or wanted to know; the same would be true of virtually any sentient being in Britain. Bombarded with the story, you grew interested against your will, and before you knew it, you were so well informed, so opinionated about the facts of the case, you would have been unfit to sit on a jury. — Robert Galbraith

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. — Robert Galbraith

Yeah, well, she ended up exchanging email addresses with these two. Nothing particularly helpful, but we're looking to establish whether they actually met her - you know, in Real Life, said Wardle.
Strange, thought Strike, how that phrase - so prevalent in childhood to differentiate between the fantasy world of play and the dull adult world of fact - had now come to signify the life that a person had outside the internet. — Robert Galbraith

And on the menu, it says "bill of fare". They won't use "menu", you see, because it was French. — Robert Galbraith

The leg was sent to Robin,' Strike reminded him. 'There's as much chance that she's seen this woman previously as I have. She's my partner. We work the same jobs.'

Robin glanced sideways at Strike. He had never before described her as his partner to somebody else, or not within Robin's hearing. He was not looking at her. Robin switched her attention back to Wardle. Apprehensive though she was, after hearing Strike put her on equal professional footing with himself she knew that, whatever she was about to see, she would not let herself, or him, down. — Robert Galbraith

She thought it might be the very first time that Strike had ever given any indication that he saw her as a woman, and she silently filed away the exchange to pore over later, in solitude. — Robert Galbraith

Matthew would not like this, she had said. He would have liked it even less had he know how much Strike had liked it. — Robert Galbraith

In a way, an explanation had never been the point. She had simply liked being the only one who wanted to find out the truth. — Robert Galbraith

Shoveling food into his mouth. Thoughts came fluently, cogently: — Robert Galbraith

A paunchy man with a face the color of corned beef, — Robert Galbraith

Did her faint eccentricity of manner mask something more serious, some fundamental cognitive problem? — Robert Galbraith

Hard to remember these days that there was a time you had to wait for the ink and paper reviews to see your work excoriated. With the invention of the internet, any subliterate cretin can be Michiko Kakutani. — Robert Galbraith

Emma Watson in white on the cover of Vogue ("The Super Star Issue"), — Robert Galbraith

The story, like all the best stories, split like an amoeba, forming an endless series of new stories and opinion pieces and speculative articles, each spawning its own counter chorus. — Robert Galbraith

The instantaneous shift from calm to calamity. The slowing of time. Every sense suddenly wire-taut and screaming. — Robert Galbraith

Landry case and - Jesus - didn't someone just send you a — Robert Galbraith

No self-respecting blowfly wants to lay eggs in acid. — Robert Galbraith

No matter how many famous people were convicted of rape or murder, still the belief persisted, almost pagan in its intensity: not him. It couldn't be him. He's famous. — Robert Galbraith

She thought of the day that Matthew had asked her out for the very first time and remembered walking home from school, her insides on fire with excitement and pride. She remembered Sarah Shadlock giggling, leaning against him in a pub in Bath, and Matthew frowning slightly and pulling away. She thought of Strike and Elin . . . what have they got to do with anything? — Robert Galbraith

Writers are different," said Waldegrave. "I've never met one who was any good who wasn't screwy. — Robert Galbraith

It had been a pretext for the papers to remind the — Robert Galbraith

They walked fifty yards in silence, and Strike had lit up a cigarette before he said: "Very, very impressive." Robin glowed with pride. — Robert Galbraith

He wondered fleetingly how many people who sat alone for hours as they scribbled their stories practiced talking about their work during their coffee breaks ... — Robert Galbraith

Memories like shrapnel, forever embedded, infected by what had come later ... words of love and undying devotion, times of sublime happiness, lies upon lies upon lies ... his attention kept sliding away from the stories he was reading. — Robert Galbraith

He was sorry, genuinely sorry, for the pain she was in. Yet the revelation had caused certain other feelings - feelings he usually kept under tight rein, considering them both misguided and dangerous - to flex inside him, to test their strength against their restraining bonds. — Robert Galbraith

Alcohol buoyed you up and it washed your eyes clean. — Robert Galbraith

For this to happen today, of all days! It felt like a wink from God. — Robert Galbraith

Abused people cling to their abusers. — Robert Galbraith

For all his determination to keep her at arm's length, they had literally leaned on each other. He could remember exactly what it felt like to have his arm around her waist as they had meandered towards Hazlitt's Hotel. She was tall enough to hold easily. He had never fancied very small women.

Matthew would not like this, she had said.

He would have liked it even less had he known how much Strike had liked it. — Robert Galbraith

Hesitation was fatal. Choose. — Robert Galbraith

Like other inveterate womanizers Strike had encountered, Duffield's voice and mannerisms were slightly camp. Perhaps such men became feminized by prolonged immersion in women's company, or perhaps it was a way of disarming their quarry. — Robert Galbraith

All love, ultimately, is self-love. — Robert Galbraith

The squashy earth-colored sofas, the tall cups of American froth, the wholesome young people working with quiet efficiency — Robert Galbraith

For in every ill-turn of fortune the most unhappy sort of unfortunate man is the one who has been happy. Boethius, De — Robert Galbraith

Birthdays in Lucy's world were always celebrated, never forgotten: there must be cake and candles and cards and presents; time must be marked, order preserved, traditions upheld. — Robert Galbraith

This house had a small front garden, black railings and a lawn in need of mowing. Two white front doors had been crammed together side by side, showing that the three-story building had been converted into upper and lower flats. A girl called Robin Ellacott lived on the ground floor. Though he had made it his business to find out her real name, inside his own head he called her The Secretary. He had just seen her pass in front of the bow window, easily recognizable because of her bright hair. — Robert Galbraith

Like foxes to a dustbin, — Robert Galbraith

More pre-Christmas revelers on the Friday-night Tube: girls in ludicrously tiny glittering dresses risking hypothermia for a fumble with the boy from Packaging. — Robert Galbraith

Psychology's loss," said Strike, "is private detection's gain. — Robert Galbraith

There were several pictures of Lula with Evan Duffield, a few of them clearly taken by one or other of the pair themselves, holding the camera at arm's length, both of them apparently stoned or drunk. — Robert Galbraith

Felix qui potuit rerum cognoscere causas. Lucky is he who has been able to understand the causes of things Virgil, Georgics, Book 2 — Robert Galbraith

He's a writer," she said, as though this explained everything. "He's disappeared before?" "He's emotional," she said, her expression glum. "He's always going off on one, but it's been ten days and I know he's really upset but I need him home now. — Robert Galbraith

middle-aged woman trying to reach the — Robert Galbraith

His size, to which was added the offense of a backpack, caused unexpressed disgruntlement in those commuters forced to share the space with him, but Strike barely noticed. — Robert Galbraith

Bestigui, who was five feet six inches at the most, had pushed his way out from behind his desk now; as unafraid of the enormous Strike as a pit bull whose yard has been invaded by a Rottweiler. — Robert Galbraith

Strike, meanwhile, had seen just enough of Robin to be shocked by her appearance. He had never seen her face so pale, nor her eyes so puffy and bloodshot. Even as he sat down at his desk, eager to hear what information on Whittaker Shanker had brought to his office, the thought crossed his mind: What's the bastard done to her? And for a fraction of a second, before fixing all his attention on Shanker, Strike imagined punching Matthew and enjoying it. — Robert Galbraith

In days and he was too late to pick up the trail at her home station. The best he could do was to lurk around the — Robert Galbraith

Robin did not know why the announcement that Strike was off to meet Elin should lower her spirits. — Robert Galbraith

However, Strike knew that the truly deluded would happily discount such trivialities as DNA evidence, citing contamination, or conspiracy. They saw what they wanted to see, blind to inconvenient, implacable truth. — Robert Galbraith

You know, there's pride, and then there's stupidity — Robert Galbraith

He had almost fallen asleep on top of Elin last night, and counted it among the week's few small achievements that he had finished the job, at least. — Robert Galbraith

You are not writing properly unless someone is bleeding, probably you. — Robert Galbraith

The argument had been in full swing when Matthew's father telephoned with the news that a funny turn Matthew's mother had suffered the previous week had been diagnosed as a mini-stroke. After this, she and Matthew felt that squabbling about Strike was in bad taste, so they went to bed in an unsatisfactory state of theoretical reconciliation, both, Robin knew, still seething. It was — Robert Galbraith

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

one of the mugs, robin saw, read keep clam and proofread — Robert Galbraith

He handed her her pills and the cup; her hands trembled; he had to support the saucer and he thought, inappropriately, of a priest offering communion. — Robert Galbraith

[He] looked as thought he had been carved out of soft ebony by a master hand that had grown bored with its own expertise, and started to veer towards the grotesque. — Robert Galbraith

There were friends all over London who would welcome his eagerly to their homes, who would throw open their guest rooms and their fridges, eager to condole and to help. The price of all of those comfortable beds and home-cooked meals, however, would be to sit at kitchen tables, once the clean-pajamaed children were in bed, and relive the filthy final battle with Charlotte, submitting to the outraged sympathy and pity of his friends' girlfriends and wives. To this he preferred grim solitude, a Pot Noodle and a sleeping bag. — Robert Galbraith

Humans often assumed symmetry and equality where none existed. — Robert Galbraith

There are always loose ends in real life. — Robert Galbraith

Everyone liked Robin. He liked Robin. How could he fail to like her, after everything they had been through together? However, from the very first he had told himself: this far and no further. A distance must be maintained. Barriers must remain in place. — Robert Galbraith

Mingling grandiosity and short-sightedness in dangerous measure. — Robert Galbraith

As always, he found her better-looking in the flesh than in the memory he had of her when not present. — Robert Galbraith

Strike knew how deeply ingrained was the belief that the evil conceal their dangerous predilections for violence and domination. When they wear them like bangles for all to see, the gullible populace laughs, calls it a pose, or finds it strangely attractive. — Robert Galbraith

Strike noticed that, in spite of Duffield's air of disorientation and distress, he had made a good job of applying his eyeliner. — Robert Galbraith

Except that once you had broken up, it was much easier to do so again. He ought to know. How many times had he and Charlotte split? How many times had their relationship fallen to pieces, and how many times had they tried to reassemble the wreckage? There had been more cracks than substance by the end: they had lived in a spider's web of fault lines, held together by hope, pain and delusion. — Robert Galbraith

Strike set out for his office beneath a sky of dirty silver, — Robert Galbraith

Handsome in the manner of an Aryan prince, possessor of a trust fund, born to fulfill a preordained place in his family and the world; a man with all the confidence twelve generations of well-documented lineage can give. — Robert Galbraith

You could find beauty nearly anywhere if you stopped to look for it, but the battle to get through the days made it easy to forget that this totally cost-free luxury existed. — Robert Galbraith

Hell's built on regret. — Robert Galbraith

She's just tried to bloody knife me, Robin!"
"Well, she didn't manage it, did she?" commented Robin, busy with the kettle.
"Ineptitude," said Strike incredulously, "is no fucking defense under the law! — Robert Galbraith

Strike's eyes followed her hand, but what caught his attention was not the small stack of neatly written papers she was showing him, but the sapphire engagement ring.

There was a pause. Robin wondered why her heart was pummeling her ribs. How ridiculous to feel defensive . . . it was up to her whether she married Matthew . . . ludicrous even to feel she had to state that to herself . . . — Robert Galbraith

The conclusion is they've got enough features in common to suggest the same perpetrator. It looks like he uses two knives, a carving knife and a machete. The victims were all vulnerable - prostitutes, drunk, emotionally off balance - and all picked up off the street except for Kelsey. He took trophies from — Robert Galbraith

She had drawn strength from everyone else's weakness, hoping that her adrenaline-fueled bravery would carry her safely back to normality, — Robert Galbraith