Charles Todd > Quotes

“That's the point of working with one's hands, you see. It gives the mind something else to do besides worry.”
― Charles Todd, A Duty to the Dead

“I decided to become a policeman to speak for the dead. They have no one else, you see. Somewhere there’s always proof of what happened, some piece of evidence that will obtain a conviction. It’s important for the guilty to be brought to justice, I think. Without justice, there’s chaos.”
― Charles Todd, A Long Shadow

“Tell me something. Why is everyone so determined to believe Wilton is innocent?"

Surprised, Davies said, "He's a war hero isn't he? Admired by the King and a friend of the Prince of Wales. He's visited Sandringham, been received by Queen Mary herself! A man like that doesn’t go around killing people!"

With a wry downturn of his lips, Rutledge silently asked, How did he win his medals, you fool, if not by being so very damned good at killing?”
― Charles Todd, A Test of Wills

“Now he realized that somehow those who had served in France and elsewhere knew a world that couldn’t be shared. How could he tell his sister—or even his father, if the elder Rutledge was still alive—what had been done on bloody ground far from home? It would be criminal to fill their minds with scenes that no one should have to remember. No one.”
― Charles Todd, A False Mirror

“Courage is not measured by
Marching bands and banners in the wind.
If you have not walked
The bloody lines and seen the faces,
You have no right to describe it so.
We die here to keep you safe at home,
And what we suffer
Pray you may never know.”
― Charles Todd, A False Mirror

“I was always a killer. It was my skill, and they’d taught me well. She taught me love.”
― Charles Todd, Hunting Shadows

“You were one of the lucky ones," Dr. Fleming had told him not a fortnight ago. "But you can't see it as luck. In your view it's intolerable, your survival. You're punishing yourself because a whimsical God let you live. You think you've failed the dead, failed to protect them and keep them alive and bring them back home again. But no one could have done that, Ian. Don't you see? No one could have brought all of them through!”
― Charles Todd, A Cold Treachery

“Ye ken, it's the living and no' the dead who know the truth. The dead still believe it was worth dying for.”

― Charles Todd, Racing the Devil”
― Charles Todd, Racing the Devil

“When you watch the living force go out of a man’s face as you fire your weapon into his unprotected body, it is very personal,”
― Charles Todd, A False Mirror

“No one ever stepped forward to protect me, Inspector. I wonder why I should feel any driving sense of duty to protect anyone else. Let me tell you something about love. It can be very cruel and very greedy. I’ve had done with it. And that has given me a freedom that I cherish.”
― Charles Todd, A False Mirror

“It was a miracle, finding myself a father. I can’t tell you. He was so small, and yet so real. He moved, he made sounds, he opened his eyes and stared into my face. His hands clutched at my fingers. It was unexpected, the depth of my feelings for him even then. I’d have done anything for him. Died for him if need be. Nothing I’d ever done to that point in my life seemed half so important.”
― Charles Todd, The Red Door

“Time? Learning to forgive? To forgive yourself most of all? I can't cure you. But you may be able to cure yourself . . .”
― Charles Todd, A Cold Treachery

“But what kind of love? It had so many faces, so many names. Jealousy wove a thread around it, and envy, and fear. People died for love–and killed for it. And yet in itself it was indefinable, it wore whatever passions people brought to it, like a mountebank, with no reality of its own.”
― Charles Todd, Search the Dark

“asking”
― Charles Todd, Racing the Devil

“Revenge was personal as a rule. Otherwise it was pointless.”
― Charles Todd, A Long Shadow

“in”
― Charles Todd, A Cold Treachery

“There’s a narrow line between love and hate sometimes, you know. And it can be crossed unwittingly.”
― Charles Todd, Watchers of Time

“Children were quick to grasp the subtleties of emotions around them, to see through evasions and quickly identify prevarication.”
― Charles Todd, A Long Shadow

“I had lost the man I was during those four years of war. I thought I could find him again.”
― Charles Todd, Racing the Devil

“Wishful thinking, that time might heal—it seldom healed anything, only making scars that were often tender to the touch, and ugly.”
― Charles Todd, Legacy Of The Dead

“I have left a part of me wherever I have lain my head, including my youth. What remains will be satisfied to go home.”
― Charles Todd, A False Mirror

“O. A. Manning’s poetry”
― Charles Todd, A Lonely Death

“Franz Josef, Emperor of Austria and King of Hungary, was well into his sixties. His wife, the Empress Elisabeth, had been assassinated years before by an anarchist, his only son had died in a murder-suicide pact, and now the Archduke, his heir, was dead. The fate of Europe might well depend on what a bitter old man decided.”
― Charles Todd, A Fine Summer's Day

“No one has considered the thousands if not millions who are going to die, the miles of good land laid waste, the starvation and disease and cruelty that marches in an Army’s wake.”
― Charles Todd, A Fine Summer's Day

“Sometimes love tries to do too much.”
― Charles Todd, A Bitter Truth

“Hamish was like a trumpet in his head. “You will no’ die. Do you hear me? You willna’ die!” “You’re already dead, Corporal. You can’t stop me.” Rutledge was finding it hard to concentrate. “You willna’ die! I willna’ let you die!”
― Charles Todd, Legacy Of The Dead

“I lost my own daughter and I’ll never have another. The hurt doesn’t go away, no matter what you tell yourself. It’s there day and night. I’d have killed any man who touched her. Why should I stand for such talk about another man’s child, if I wouldn’t have stood for it about my own?”
― Charles Todd, A Long Shadow

“There’s a beauty in birds on the wing,
That stirs the heart and makes earthbound creatures
Long for flight, but the larks above the battlefield
Are silenced by the sounds of war.
I have watched birds out at sea,
Catching the wind,
And longed to follow them,
To some safe place far from here.”
― Charles Todd, A Long Shadow

“There have always been two standards,” Rutledge answered. “People called Fiona a whore, but there’s no name for a man who has an illegitimate child.”
― Charles Todd, Legacy Of The Dead

“deserved compassion, and help. Rutledge would see to it. Hamish said, “You could na’ let Mowbray hang for murder. He never touched a soul. She’ll fare well enough. You must na’ fret.” It wasn’t clear whether he was speaking of Aurore or Joanna Daulton. Rutledge said, “No.” But he knew he would remember Aurore’s face and her stillness, and the French way she had of shrugging, whenever he thought of Jean. They were inextricably linked, because he and Simon were linked. He could still see the pistol beside the chair, he could smell the powder and the blood. There but for the grace of God go I … . But Hamish said into the roar of the engine and the sound of the wind whispering through the open car, “Not now. Not yet.”
― Charles Todd, Search The Dark