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21 " They had a secret, the two of them, and there was no better way to start a friendship than with a secret. "
― Peter Swanson , Before She Knew Him
22 " he spent most days in a haze of disinterest. "
― Peter Swanson , The Girl with a Clock for a Heart
23 " boys who had been born on third base and thought they hit a triple (as my mother often quoted), "
― Peter Swanson , The Kind Worth Killing
24 " I had survived the vulnerability of childhood, and the danger of first love. There was comfort in knowing that I would never be in either of those positions again, that, from now on, I would be the only person responsible for my own happiness. "
25 " Approaching forty, George felt as though his world had been slowly drained of all its colors. He’d passed that age when he could reasonably expect to fall madly in love with someone and raise a family, or to take the world by storm, or to have anything surprising lift him out of his day-to-day existence. "
26 " I know, right. I keep thinking "
27 " Truthfully, I don’t think murder is necessarily as bad as people make it out to be. Everyone dies. What difference does it make if a few bad apples get pushed along a little sooner than God intended? And your wife, for example, seems like the kind worth killing. "
28 " Her hand was like a bundle of chopsticks covered in a layer of tissue paper. "
― Peter Swanson , Her Every Fear
29 " If you are still alive when you read this, close your eyes. I am under their lids, growing black. "
― Peter Swanson , Eight Perfect Murders
30 " the key to happiness was to find one job and do it as well as possible. He said that his own father had told him the same thing. Be a builder and learn to hit a nail straight and you will never lack for happiness. "
31 " I am a happy person, always have been. But that's just my personality, which has nothing to do with this broken brain that periodically and very convincingly tells me that I'm a worthless person who doesn't deserve to live. "
32 " The awful thing about loneliness, Jack thought, not for the first time, is that it isn’t always cured by other people. "
― Peter Swanson , Nine Lives
33 " Harry felt a sudden and revolting sense of pure grief. It swept through him like an attack of nausea, an absolute knowledge that he was all alone and life was meaningless and devoid of joy. "
― Peter Swanson , All the Beautiful Lies
34 " Being an avid mystery reader as an adolescent does not prepare you for real life. I truly imagined that my adult existence would be far more booklike than it turned out to be. I thought, for example, that there would be several moments in which I got into a cab to follow someone. I thought I'd attend far more readings of someone's will, and that I'd need to know how to pick a lock, and that any time I went on vacation (especially to old creaky inns or rented lake houses) something mysterious would happen. I thought train rides would inevitably involve a murder, that sinister occurrences would plague wedding weekends, and that old friends would constantly be getting in touch to ask for help, to tell me that their lives were in danger. I even thought quicksand would be an issue. "
35 " I'd like to say something here about how I'll be with Claire again soon, but I don't believe any of that nonsense. When we die, we become nothing. The same nothing we were before we were born, but of course this time that nothingness is forever. "
36 " He’d always wondered what was worse: to feel emptiness and not know what would make it go away, or to feel emptiness and know exactly what was missing. Tonight, for whatever reason, he seemed to have the answer. He understood with evangelical clarity how fleeting our lives are, and how foolish it is to mourn those who’ve left too soon. "
37 " The Sittaford Mystery (1931) by Agatha Christie The Nine Tailors (1934) by Dorothy L. Sayers The Corpse in the Snowman (1941) by Nicholas Blake Tied Up in Tinsel (1972) by Ngaio Marsh The Shining (1977) by Stephen King Gorky Park (1981) by Martin Cruz Smith Smilla’s Sense of Snow (1992) by Peter Høeg A Simple Plan (1993) by Scott Smith The Ice Harvest (2000) by Scott Phillips Raven Black (2006) by Ann Cleeves "
38 " It was The Cuckoo’s Calling by Robert Galbraith, who not so long ago had been revealed to actually be J. K. Rowling. "
39 " Matthew, who’d already texted Mira to tell her he was running a little late, leaned back behind his desk and did one of the things he was very good at doing. He listened to a woman. "
40 " All poems- all works of art, really, seem like cries of help to me, but especially poetry. When they are good, and I do believe there are very few good poems, reading them is like having a long-dead stranger whisper in your ear, trying to be heard. "