Home > Work > Child 44 (Leo Demidov, #1)
1 " Trust but check. Check on those we trust. "
― Tom Rob Smith , Child 44 (Leo Demidov, #1)
2 " To stand up for someone was to stitch your fate into the lining of theirs. "
3 " There's nothing more stubborn than a fact. That is why you hate them so much. They offend you. "
4 " —Isn’t this how it starts? You have a cause you believe in, a cause worth dying for. Soon, it’s a cause worth killing for. Soon, it’s a cause worth killing innocent people for. "
5 " His hate wasn't professional; it was an obsession, a fixation, as if unrequited love had grown awful, twisted into something ugly. "
6 " The price of this story was the audience's innocence. "
7 " If he wanted to hear about love, the first verse was his to sing. "
8 " Leo, I have another secret. I've fallen in love with you.” "I've always loved you. "
9 " Trust but check "
10 " The survival of their political system justified anything. The promise of a golden age where none of this brutality would exist, where everything would be in plenty and poverty would be a memory, justified anything. "
11 " sentimentality could blind a man to the truth. Those who appear the most trustworthy deserve the most suspicion. "
12 " The duty of an investigator was to scratch away at innocence until guilt was uncovered. If no guilt was uncovered then they hadn’t scratched deep enough. "
13 " We should measure a man by what they’re prepared to do themselves. Not by what they’re prepared to have others do for them. "
14 " ....a man both handsome and repulsive in equal measure-as if his good looks were plastered over a rotten centre, a hero's face with a henchman's heart. "
15 " ruthlessness. Leo was trapped. He couldn’t claim the "
16 " Precautionary measure. With those words any deaths could be justified. Better to destroy your own people than there be a chance a German soldier might find a loaf of bread. "
17 " What is your name? "
18 " Leo’s very existence had been a kind of perpetual punishment for Vasili. So, then, why did he miss him? "
19 " Was the difference merely that Vasili was senselessly cruel while he’d been idealistically cruel? One was an empty, indifferent cruelty while the other was a principled, pretentious cruelty which thought of itself as reasonable and necessary. "
20 " For decades no one had taken action according to what they believed was right or wrong but by what they thought would please their Leader. People "
