Publishers don't nurse you; they buy and sell you.

The equally is a political theory, but no a practical politics.

The tragedy of loss is not that we grieve, but that we cease to grieve, and then perhaps the dead are dead at last.

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?

We English are good at forgiving our enemies; it releases us from the obligation of liking our friends.

Feel, he told himself, feel, feel, feel. Even if what you feel is pain, only let yourself feel.

gossip ... was like any other commodity in the marketplace. You received it only if you had something of value to give.