“How easy it was to capitalize on a persons own bent for self-destruction; how simple to nudge them into non-being, then to stand back and shrug and agree that it had been the inevitable result of a...”

“How could the death of someone you had never met affect you so?”

“The dead could only speak through the mouths of those left behind, and through the signs they left scattered behind them.”

“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 happeni...”

“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.”

“Happy girls are the prettiest”

“A girl can still admire, cant she? Even those who cant afford to go in the store can still window-shop. Right? Knowing he wasnt for me didnt mean I couldnt covet the merchandise.”

“The Lord prefers common-looking people. That is why he made so many of them.”

“Young adults rebel against the pre-invented/ packaged world, but sooner or later they stop and they also become proponents of the tried and true.”

“Definitions from Mulla Do-PiazaBribe Substitute for law, which is a substitute for justice.”

“People who understand human behavior and personality tend to find flaws in every next person they meet, analyze their actions and develop bit sociopath nature.”

“Rich people do not work for money, they are doing what they like to do”

“Why do we need money beyond a point? If we are free of ill health, enmity, and debt, is that not enough? Too much money only leads to less peace.”

“Nine out of ten significant people have to do with money or war!”