"The dead could only speak through the mouths of those left behind, and through the signs they left scattered behind them."
"You ought to give up detecting and try fantasy writing, Strike"
"Ridiculous," he said breathlessly. "You ought to give up detecting and try fantasy writing."
"Couples tended to be of roughly equivalent personal attractiveness, though of course factors such as money often seemed to secure a partner of significantly better looks than oneself."
"She wuz depressed. Yeah, she wuz on stuff for it. Like me. Sometimes it jus' takes you over. It's an illness," she said, although she made the words sound like "it's uh nill"
"It's an illness," she said, although she made the words sound like "it's uh nillness." Nillness, thought Strike, for a second distracted. Sometimes illness turned slowly to nillness, as was happening to Bristow's mother... sometimes nillness rose to meet you out of nowhere, like a concrete road slamming your skull apart."
"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."
"In spite of her plainness that would have made wallflowers of other women, she radiated a great sense of self-importance."
"Who was more conscious than the soldier of capricious fortune, of the random roll of the dice?"
"The act of shopping for what he needed, and of setting up the bare necessities for himself, had lulled Strike back into the familiar soldierly state of doing what needed to be done, without question or complaint."
"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."
"He had hoped to spot the flickering shadow of a murderer as he turned the file's pages, but instead it was the ghost of Lula herself who emerged, gazing up at him, as victims of violent crimes sometimes did, through the detritus of their interrupted lives."
"Im.’ The monosyllable was heavy with contempt. ‘’E’s a twat.’‘Is he?’‘Yeah, ’e is. Ask Kieran.’She gave the impression that she and Kieran stood together, sane, dispassionate observers of the idiots populating Lula’s world."
"In the inverted food chain of fame, it was the big beasts who were stalked and hunted"
"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."