13 Quotes by Jon Courtenay Grimwood

All beauty, according to Lady Katchatka, had its origins in pain.

There was something intrinsically sad about Shinjuku. A vacuum-packed hollowness that no quantity of neon could hide. Roppongi was the same, only there the sadness was older and more Western. All that movement to so little purpose. A million strangers searching for a cure to the darkness behind their eyes in the void between someone else's legs.

She was herself, the original. Everyone else was just a copy.

No one owns you, I know that. No one owns me. No one owns anyone. We just get to borrow each for a while.

Unfortunately, since there was only one of him, most of his riches were wasted.

We die every day," Kit said. "It's called being human.

Half of Japan still couldn't tell the difference between crime and politics.

There were old firemasters and bad firemasters; there were no old bad firemasters

It followed that every act, whether the finding of a new proof for a complex mathematical problem or a twist of vision that turned one school of art into another was a result of endless failure.