60 quotes
"But what is the use of making the world more beautiful if the people who live in it can't love one another?"
An Unsuitable Job for a Woman (1972)
"Old age can be very frightening, Commander. A lawyer whose mind is apt to go blank isn't just inefficient, he's dangerous."
A Certain Justice (1997)
Every novelist write what he or she needs to write, a subconscious compulsion to express and explain his unique view of reality.
Time to be Earnest – a Fragment of Biography (1999)
"Hunch is a good servant but a poor master."
An Unsuitable Job for a Woman (1972)
If from infancy you treat children as gods they are liable in adulthood to act as devils.
The Children of Men (1992)
"It isn't what you suspect, it's what you can prove that counts."
An Unsuitable Job for a Woman (1972)
No one joins the murder squad who hasn't a taste for death.
A Taste for Death (1986)
"You need to decide what you're interested in."
A Certain Justice (1997)
Was there a place for him in this modern world, where systems mattered more than people?
A Certain Justice (1997)
Violent death, like most disasters, afforded its satisfactions to those who were neither victim nor suspect.
A Certain Justice (1997)
What condemned a man [in a police investigation] was the inability to keep his mouth shut.
A Certain Justice (1997)
He had disciplined his mind not to speculate; speculation in advance of the facts was always futile and could be dangerous.
A Certain Justice (1997)
To enjoy the sole attention of one agreeable man and no attention at all from anyone else was all she ever hoped from a party.
An Unsuitable Job for a Woman (1972)
It was one of those perfect English autumnal days which occur more frequently in memory than in life.
A Taste for Death (1986)
No one was about, yet he seemed to sense the presence of watching eyes behind blank windows.
A Certain Justice (1997)
If that was what she wanted to believe, why not let her?
A Certain Justice (1997)
"I was glad to give up teaching, at least in London, glad to be rid of noise and violence and staff-room politics, and the constant fight to keep order."
A Certain Justice (1997)
It was people, not architects, who made slums.
I knew that what I had felt was envy or regret, not for something lost but for something never achieved.
The Children of Men (1992)
The intention of any novelist must surely be to make that straight avenue to the human heart.
Time to be Earnest – a Fragment of Biography (1999)