Real Tigers Quotes

“as every office worker knows, it’s not the hope that kills you. It’s knowing it’s the hope that kills you that kills you.”
― Mick Herron, Real Tigers

“Like most forms of corruption, it began with men in suits.”
― Mick Herron, Real Tigers

“all the flexibility of a rhinoceros in a corridor.”
― Mick Herron, Real Tigers

“If no sober day was wasted, then nobody could take one from her. Even if today brought a slip, the total would stay the same. All that would happen wag that she would not be adding to it. It was like money in the bank. If you missed a deposit, that didn't mean the sum grew smaller.”
― Mick Herron, Real Tigers

“No sober day is wasted.
A familiar thought―it was a bedtime mantra, a grace note on which to end her days. No sober day is wasted, meaning that whatever else she'd done or failed to do on any given day, there was always this achievement to reflect on in the violet hour.”
― Mick Herron, Real Tigers

“The public was like one of those huge Pacific jellyfish; one enormous, pulsating mass of indifference, drifting wherever the current carried it; an organism without a motive, ambition or original sin to call its own, but which somehow believed, in whatever passed for its brain, that it chose its own leaders and had a say in its own destiny.”
― Mick Herron, Real Tigers

“She’d read a lot of discussions about 9/11, obviously, but contributions from structural engineers had been conspicuous by their absence.”
― Mick Herron, Real Tigers

“Nobody left Slough House at the end of a working day feeling like they'd contributed to the security of the nation. They left it feeling like their brains had been fed through a juicer.”
― Mick Herron, Real Tigers

“Besides, if his party stood for anything, it was for defending the right of the strong to flourish, which meant preventing the weak from taking up unnecessary space.”
― Mick Herron, Real Tigers

“a thought she'd once had about Lamb was that when they'd pulled the Wall down he'd built himself another, and had been living behind it ever since”
― Mick Herron, Real Tigers

“Besides, leaked evidence would have resulted in a whitewash, or a Select Committee Inquiry as they were also known;”
― Mick Herron, Real Tigers

“A birdy tells me you’ve got one of mine in your lock-up.”
“That would be River Cartwright.”
“Yes, but don’t blame me. I think his mother was a hippy.”
“Smoke a lot of dope while he was in the womb, did she? That might explain today’s dipshit behaviour. And I thought he was one of your cleverer boys.”
“Mind like a razor,” Lamb agreed. “Disposable.”
― Mick Herron, Real Tigers

“Lowell fell backwards as the world span out of control”
― Mick Herron, Real Tigers

“The only reason for the absence of a sign requiring entrants to abandon all hope is that, as every office worker knows, it’s not the hope that kills you. It’s knowing it’s the hope that kills you that kills you.”
― Mick Herron, Real Tigers

“Such observations came naturally to Judd, who could no more look at a woman without assessing her bedability than he could see a microphone without minting a soundbite. She smiled—she had recognised him, of course—then replaced the bottle in its bucket and moved away. He'd leave a decent tip, and get her number. He was supposed to be behaving himself, for reasons of marital harmony, but a waitress hardly counted, for God's sake.”
― Mick Herron, Real Tigers

“Rumpus" was a favourite PJ-word; one he'd employed to describe a recent tabloid splash about his friendship with a lap dancer. It was also a term he'd used in reference to both 9/11 and the global recession.”
― Mick Herron, Real Tigers

“Like smokers unable to smell their habit on their clothes, drinkers always thought themselves unaffected.”
― Mick Herron, Real Tigers

“As for Lamb, he’d hang River out to dry if he took another step without putting him in the picture. That was something to think about, so River thought about it as he stuffed the phone away, and took the rest of the stairs three at a time.”
― Mick Herron, Real Tigers

“Louisa returned to the sitting room, trying not to compare and contrast with her own studio flat, which was tiny and crooked and needed serious attention, like maybe arson.”
― Mick Herron, Real Tigers

“belief was not actually about believing; belief was simply somewhere to shelve hope”
― Mick Herron, Real Tigers

“Conspiracy theorists, she knew, were paranoid by definition, and usually with good reason – they were indeed being watched, largely because they were standing on an upturned bucket, haranguing the sheeple about their wingnut delusions.”
― Mick Herron, Real Tigers

“You either cleaned up other people's messes or you didn't--and that was the class system for you, right there.”
― Mick Herron, Real Tigers

“Taking another drink was not about lapsing. It was about becoming someone she planned never to be again.”
― Mick Herron, Real Tigers

“So thanks to your guilty conscience, I’m damp as a bimbo’s cleavage.”
― Mick Herron, Real Tigers

“It occurred to him, not for the first time, that London was more than one city. There was the one he was taxied comfortably about in, whose views were spacious and spoke in agreeable accents of wealth and plenty, while the other was cramped, soiled and barbarous, peopled by a feral race who’d strip you bare and chew the bones.”
― Mick Herron, Real Tigers

“if an architect ever designed a car park the sight of which lifted the heart, civilisation’s job would be done.”
― Mick Herron, Real Tigers

“fate was the kind of attack dog you didn’t want to taunt.”
― Mick Herron, Real Tigers

“In a nearby flowerbed a scatter of feathers betrayed where a fox had caught a pigeon, unless the pigeon had simply exploded.”
― Mick Herron, Real Tigers

“That a delicacy for the pampered was acquired through brutality was hardly news. By any civilised standard, it was how luxury ought to be measured—wealth meant nothing if it didn’t create suffering. Because the standard liberal whine that the rich were cushioned from life’s harsh realities was laughable ignorance: the rich created those realities, and made sure they kept on happening. That was what kitchens were for, along with prisons, factories and public transport.”
― Mick Herron, Real Tigers

“He was clutching his phone in one hand; his self-respect in the other. Any unexpected movement, and he’d lose his grip on one or both.”
― Mick Herron, Real Tigers