201 Quotes by Nicola Griffith

He was always just about to leave, always about to pick up the phone, and he always persuaded himself for a minute or two that stretched into thirty, into two hours, into night. We go back a long way.

What kind of car did Michael Honeycutt, banker, drive? What did he look like, how did he sound? I wanted to see him, to weigh the fabric of his suit, smell his cologne, judge his haircut, watch his body language, listen to the way he shaped his vowels.

When an imago first pushes free of the budding chrysalis and unfolds its still-damp wings, anything, even something as ephermal as breath, can deform the final, glorious insect. A crass question now could crush this fragile new understanding. I asked anyway.

We sat silently, contemplating the ghosts we had created between us, and the difference between our world and that of most people.

She had slumped like a bundle of abandoned knitting.

We drove in silence. The only things we knew about each other revolved around the death of a man who had been her friend and I didn’t want to talk about that, didn’t want to think about murder and men with money.

I had not heard her laugh before. It was subtle and warm as swirled brandy.

I think she knows she’s made a terrible, irreversible mistake, but she can’t stop because if she did, she’d have to acknowledge the mistake and the fact that people really don’t care. They just think she’s a freak.

I love to feel the sun rub against my pale northern skin, love its fingers reaching down into muscle and bone.