He didn't want her; he wanted me. Well, you know how it is." Dalgliesh did know. This, after all, was the commonest, the most banal of personal tragedies. You loved someone. They didn't love you. Worse still, in defiance of their own best interests and to the destruction of your peace, they loved another. What would half the world's poets and novelists do without this universal tragicomedy?

I knew the facts of death before I knew the facts of life. There never was a time when I didn't see the skull beneath the skin.

Crime fiction confirms our belief, despite some evidence to the contrary, that we live in a rational, comprehensible, and moral universe.

We can experience nothing but the present moment, live in no other second of time, and to understand this is as close as we can get to eternal life.

I still occasionally need to struggle but I now fear it less. The weapons I fight it with are also my consolations: books, music, food, wine, nature.

the most successful marriages were always based on both partners feeling that they had done rather well for themselves.

Of all the things that human beings did together, the sexual act was the one with the most various of reasons.