Michael Robotham > Quotes

“Resentment is like swallowing a poison and waiting for the other person to die.”
― Michael Robotham, Life or Death

“Remember, the worst hour of your life only lasts for sixty minutes. (292)”
― Michael Robotham, Suspect

“Friendship is a difficult thing to define. Oscar here is my oldest friend. How would you define friendship, Oscar?"
Oscar grunts slightly, as though the answer is obvious.
"Friendship is about choice and chemistry. It cannot be defined."
"But surely there's something more to it than that."
"It is a willingness to overlook faults and to accept them. I would let a friend hurt me without striking back," he says, smiling. "But only once."
De Souza laughs. "Bravo, Oscar, I can always rely on you to distill an argument down to its purest form. What do you think, Dayel?"
The Indian rocks his head from side to side, proud that he has been asked to speak next.
"Friendship is different for each person and it changes throughout our lives. At age six it is about holding hands with your best friend. At sixteen it is about the adventure ahead. At sixty it is about reminiscing." He holds up a finger. "You cannot define it with any one word, although honesty is perhaps the closest word-"
"No, not honesty," Farhad interrupts. "On the contrary, we often have to protect our friends from what we truly think. It is like an unspoken agreement. We ignore each other's faults and keep our confidences. Friendship isn't about being honest. The truth is too sharp a weapon to wield around someone we trust and respect. Friendship is about self-awareness. We see ourselves through the eyes of our friends. They are like a mirror that allows us to judge how we are traveling."
De Souza clears his throat now. I wonder if he is aware of the awe that he inspires in others. I suspect he is too intelligent and too human to do otherwise.
"Friendship cannot be defined," he says sternly. "The moment we begin to give reasons for being friends with someone we begin to undermine the magic of the relationship. Nobody wants to know that they are loved for their money or their generosity or their beauty or their wit. Choose one motive and it allows a person to say, 'is that the only reason?'"
The others laugh. De Souza joins in with them. This is a performance.
He continues: "Trying to explain why we form particular friendships is like trying to tell someone why we like a certain kind of music or a particular food. We just do.”
― Michael Robotham, The Night Ferry

“One of the strange things about friendship is that time together isn't cancelled out by time apart. One doesn't erase the other or balance it on some invisible scale. You can spend a few hours with someone and they will change your life, or you can spend a lifetime with a person and remain unchanged.”
― Michael Robotham, The Night Ferry

“Alcoholics don’t have relationships-they take hostages.”
― Michael Robotham, Lost

“Don’t say anything unless you can improve on the silence.”
― Michael Robotham, Suspect

“She says I should reach out and build bridges, but I think certain bridges are meant to burn and it’s a shame some people can’t be on them when it happens.”
― Michael Robotham, The Secrets She Keeps

“Sometimes friends do foolish things. My father told me that true friends are like gold coins. Ships are wrecked by storms and lie for hundreds of years on the ocean floor. Worms destroy the wood. Iron corrodes. Silver turns black but gold doesn't change in sea water. It loses none of its brilliance or colour. It comes up the same. It survives shipwrecks and time.”
― Michael Robotham, The Night Ferry

“Do you believe in God?” he asks.
“Do you?”
“I used to”
“What happened?”
“I couldn’t find him. He’s supposed to be everywhere. I mean, he’s not supposed to be playing hide-and-seek.”
― Michael Robotham, Suspect

“We need the darkness to appreciate the light, and the bumps along the road to stop us falling asleep at the wheel.”
― Michael Robotham, The Secrets She Keeps

“Jealousy is a terrible thing. I know all the psychological triggers. The fear of losing control, the fear of loss, the fear of abandonment, neglect and loneliness...But the most destructive thing about jealousy is that it kills what it values-the love you want to save won't survive the constraints of jealousy. There is no entitlement. Love is either equal or a tragedy.”
― Michael Robotham, Bleed for Me

“Truth is a matter of semantics, whether we like it or not.”
― Michael Robotham, Suspect

“Everyone thinks I'm so strong. They expect me to face autumns and winters like that and bitch-slap them down; make them come to heel. I'm not so strong. I only pretend.”
― Michael Robotham, The Night Ferry

“There is a moment when all hope disappears, all pride is gone, all expectation, all faith, all desire. I own that moment. It belongs to me. That's when I hear the sound, the sound of a mind breaking. It's not a loud crack like when bones shatter or a spine fractures or a skull collapses. And it's not something soft and wet like a heart breaking. It's a sound that makes you wonder how much pain a person can endure; a sound that shatters memories and lets the past leak into the present; a sound so high that only the hounds of hell can hear it. Can you hear it? Someone is curled up in a tiny ball crying softly into an endless night.”
― Michael Robotham, Shatter

“Life is short. Love is vast. Live like there's no tomorrow.”
― Michael Robotham, Life or Death

“Why do our parents have the ability to make us feel like children even when our hair is graying and we have a mortgage that feels like a Third World debt? (135)”
― Michael Robotham, Suspect

“People think it’s easy to be cynical and pessimistic, but it’s incredibly hard work. It’s much easier to be hopeful.”
― Michael Robotham, Suspect

“I was in love with her. And it didn't matter that she wasn't in love with me. I loved her. It was my love story. I don't expect you to understand that but it's true. You don't have to be loved back. You can love anyway.”
― Michael Robotham, Lost

“If I gave up sarcasm that would leave interpretive dance as my only way of communicating.”
― Michael Robotham, Life or Death

“I have been visited by every shade of grief and know that it doesn't come in black or white”
― Michael Robotham, Say You're Sorry

“I don't know what else to tell you. I often think how different my life would have been - how much happier - if you'd been a part of it. One day.”
― Michael Robotham, The Night Ferry

“We get given our faces, thinks Audie, but we inherit our lives, our happiness and our unhappiness. Some get a lot, some get a little. Some savor every morsel and suck the marrow out of every bone. We take pleasure in the sound of rain, the smell of cut grass, the smiles of strangers, the feeling of dawn on a hot day. We learn things and realize we can never know more than we don’t know. We catch love like a cold and cling to it like wreckage in a storm.”
― Michael Robotham, Life or Death

“I don't know why people keep trying to help me like this. They should be heading for the hills. Ali says I inspire loyalty but I seem to be taking kindness that I can never hope to repay. I am not a perfect human being. I'm a cynic and a pessimist and sometimes I feel as though I'm locked into this life by an accident of birth. But at times like this, a random act of kindness or the touch of another human being makes me believe I can be different, better, redeemed.”
― Michael Robotham, Lost

“That's the problem with folks nowadays. Nobody takes responsibility for their actions. Make a mistake and you pay for it. That's life.”
― Michael Robotham, The Night Ferry

“I know it sounds foolishly old fashioned, but I'm stuck with this idea that there's something dignified and noble about facing your enemy and looking him in the eye before you thrust a saber in his heart.”
― Michael Robotham, Lost

“Raising children I’ve decided is a lot sadder than I expecte4d. Seeing them grow up brightly and vividly is tempered by the knowledge that each year brings another share of lasts. The last time I push my daughter on a swing. The last time I play Tooth Fairy or Santa Claus. The last time I read a bedtime story. If I could give my daughters one piece of advice I would tell them to make the most of the first times -their first kiss, their first date, their first love, the first smile of their first child…There can only be one.”
― Michael Robotham, Bleed for Me

“It was the most important moment in human history, the telling of the first lie. That's what separates us from the other animals. It has nothing to do with humans thinking on a higher plane or having easily available credit. We lie to each other. We deliberately mislead.”
― Michael Robotham, Lost

“I know the answer now, but I’m so frightened I’ve forgotten the question.”
― Michael Robotham, Suspect

“Sometimes I wake at night and worry that I might have disappeared in my sleep. That's what happens when nobody cares about you. Bit by bit you begin to disappear until people look right through your chest and head like you're made of glass. It's not about love; it's about being forgotten. We only exist if others think about us. It is like that tree that falls in the forest with nobody around to hear it. Who the fuck cares except the birds?”
― Michael Robotham, Shatter

“I try to explain how people react when overwhelmed by confusion and negative emotions. Some drink too much. Others overeat or beat their wives or kick the cat. And a surprising number hold their hands against a hot plate or slice open their skin with a razor blade. It's an extreme coping mechanism. They talk about their inner pain being turned outward. By giving it a physical manifestation they find it easier to deal with. (35)”
― Michael Robotham, Suspect