“(A murderer about their victim:)"He was an expert in vicarious death. I should like to have been there to see how he enjoyed the real thing.”

“I don’t think He bargains.”“Oh yes He does. I may not be religious but I know my Bible. My mother saw to that. He bargains all right. But He’s supposed to he just. If He wants belief He’d better provide some evidence.’“That He exists?”“That He cares.”

“If from infancy you treat children as gods, they are liable in adulthood to act as devils.”

“Since even the most fastidious among us can rarely escape hearing salacious local gossip, it is as well to enjoy what cannot be avoided.”

“SIR DANIEL was a large man, broad of shoulder...his eyes were rather small above the double pouches and the look they fixed on Dalgliesh gave nothing away. Looking at his bland, unrevealing face sparked off for Dalgliesh a childhood memory. A multi-millionaire, in an age when a million meant something, had been brought to dinner at the rectory by a local landowner who was one of his father's churchwardens. He too had been a big man, affable an easy guest. The fourteen-year-old Adam [Dalgliesh] had been disconcerted to discover during the dinner conversation that he was rather stupid. He had then learned that the ability to make a great deal of money in a particular way is a talent highly advantageous to it possessor and possibly beneficial to others, but implies no virtue, wisdom or intelligence beyond expertise in a lucrative field.”

“Never tell an unnecessary lie; the truth has great authority. The cleverest murders have been caught, not because they told the one essential lie, but because they continued to lie about unimportant detail when the truth could have done them no harm.”

“Open your mind to new experiences, particularly to the study of other ­people. Nothing that happens to a writer – however happy, however tragic – is ever wasted.”

“Authors always take rejection badly. They equate it with infanticide.”

“…It was embarrassing now to recall with what little regret he had let slip his pleasures and preoccupations, the imminence of loss revealing them for what they were, at best only a solace, at worst a trivial squandering of time and energy. Now he had to lay hold of them again and believe that they were important, at least to himself. He doubted whether he would ever again believe them important to other people.”

“Violent death erase[s] more than the semblance of life.”

“What do you mean by sound government?'Good public order, no corruption in high places, freedom from fear and war and crime, a reasonably equitable distribution of wealth and resources, concern for the individual life.'Then we haven't got sound government.”