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

“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

“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

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

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

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

“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

“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

“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

“It isn’t actually a question of guilt or innocence, is it? It’s a matter of what the jury believes, once we’ve told them what evidence there is on either side. Given the proper evidence, we could probably convict God. Without it, Lucifer himself would walk free!”
― Charles Todd, A Test Of Wills

“Love teaches you humility—patience—understanding.”
― Charles Todd, A Test Of Wills

“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

“We left the flat together. I expected– dreaded– Mrs. Hennessy popping out her door and asking who my young man was. “An escaped murderer, Mrs. Hennessy; my father will be horrified.” But she didn’t come out her door.”
― Charles Todd, A Duty to the Dead

“We walked away from all that was warm and dear and stood frightened in cold rain where the guns fired, and in the end, we died in pain, the black stinking mud our shroud, embraced at last not by living arms, but by the bones of those who before us died …”
― Charles Todd, Legacy of the Dead

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

“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

“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

“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

“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

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

“Gallantry,” he often told his men, “is an act of great courage under fire, of bravery beyond the call of duty. But if it kills your comrades as well or puts the battle in jeopardy, then it is arrant pride and foolishness. Learn to know the difference.”
― Charles Todd, An Impartial Witness

“My mother had said to me afterward, “Your father is a fool.” When I asked her why, she’d shrugged. “Men generally are,” she’d retorted, and changed the subject.”
― Charles Todd, A Duty To The Dead

“You can’t save the world from itself. If people are intent on destroying themselves, they will. And sometimes they don’t care if they bring others down with them. That’s selfish but it’s human nature.”
― Charles Todd, A Fearsome Doubt

“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

“What of the hundreds of faceless men on the streets looking for work, trying to pick up the threads of family life, hoping that the dying had made a better Britain, and finding they were lost in it. Faceless men…People stepped around them now, ignored the brave boy who’d marched away to glory and now begged on the street because a one-armed man couldn’t work. He thought sometimes, in the dark corners of his mind, that the dead were the lucky ones. They hadn’t been disillusioned.”
― Charles Todd, A Long Shadow

“He won't tell me very much about his war.
None of us do. It isn't something to share, you see. What we've seen, what we've done, ought to stay in France. But it didn't, it came home in our memories. They aren't memories we want you to know. You are the world we fought for. Safe and sane and not ugly. Better to keep it that way.”
― Charles Todd, The Black Ascot

“I hadn’t realized that a break in a bone could be so exquisitely painful. I’d feel a greater tolerance for the the wounded after this.”
― Charles Todd, A Duty to the Dead

“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

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