32 Quotes by Andrea Camilleri

But then why, when talking on the phone, did they quarrel, on average at least once every four sentences? Maybe, though the inspector, it was an effect of the distance between them becoming less and less tolerable with each passing day, since as we grow old – for every now and then one must, yes, look reality in the eye and call things by their proper names – we feel more keenly the need to have the person we love beside us.

He was convinced he would keep his word. Not because he feared for his health, but because one cannot break a promise made to one’s guardian angel. And he resumed the climb.

Don’t you read mystery novels?” “Not very often. Anyway, what does that mean, ‘mystery novel’? What is a ‘detective novel’?

Unwell? I was fine, as good as one might feel in such circumstances. No, my friend, I merely pretended to faint. I’m a good actress. Actually, a thought had come into my mind: if a terrorist, I said to myself, were to blow up this church with all of us inside, at least one-tenth of all the hypocrisy in the world would disappear with us. So I had myself escorted out.

Montalbano recalled how in now distant times, when the sea withdrew, it would leave behind only sweet-smelling algae and beautiful shells that were like gifts to mankind. Now it only gave back our own rubbish.