Timothy Hallinan > Quotes

“Life is a gift. If we don't live it well, we are being ungrateful. And we have to love the ones who journey with us." (A Nail Through the Heart)”
― Timothy Hallinan

“She gave me the slow nod women use to indicate that they understand our pain, they admire the courage with which we handle it, and they're absolutely certain that it's all our fault.”
― Timothy Hallinan, Crashed

“What was it like, being married to six actresses?"

"Like being married to one of them. They're all pretty much alike."

"Why'd you keep doing it, then?"

"Hope is the thing with feathers," Trent said, "that tickles your scrotum at the moments when you most need a clear head.”
― Timothy Hallinan, The Fame Thief

“I'd learned early that fatness in a book wasn't a warning sign, but rather a promise that you would be allowed to remain in its world for a longer time.”
― Timothy Hallinan, Nighttown

“She drove as though a fortune-teller had warned her about the day.”
― Timothy Hallinan, Crashed

“And you know women, they're both back there turning it into the crime of the century. Planting it in a little garden in the center of their hearts and watering it with feelings. Talking about it, sharing it. You're a cheat, you're a heartbreaker, you're like a museum exhibit, Everything That's Wrong with Guys.”
― Timothy Hallinan, Little Elvises

“I let one of the men rename me. A man gave me the name Rose – you didn’t know that, did you, Poke?…He said, this man, he said that Kwan was too hard to remember, even though it’s a good name and it means ‘spirit,’ and that the rose was the queen of flowers and I was the queen of Patpong.” She laughs, rough as a cough. “The queen of Patpong. A kingdom of whores and viruses. Death with a smile.”
― Timothy Hallinan, The Queen of Patpong

“Whole areas of my mind, I have come to realize, distrust other areas.”
― Timothy Hallinan, Fields Where They Lay

“Textual elision," Tyrone volunteered. "Lotta times, elided material, the stuff that doesn't make it into a text is what's most important. Didn't make it because whoever wrote the text thought it was self-evident."

"Thank you," I said. "I'll keep that in mind the next time I'm trapped in a room with a primary-source document.”
― Timothy Hallinan, Little Elvises

“So you don't think the government is responsible for anything?" "Oh, it's responsible," Rafferty says. "It's responsible for the sloppiness and imprecision of the War on Terror, for example. It's responsible for taking people's tax dollars and spending the country into debt on useless wars and pointless pork projects to buy votes. It's responsible for bailing out the banks instead of standing up for the people the banks cheated. It's responsible for plenty,”
― Timothy Hallinan, The Fear Artist

“Ain't never gone to be no asshole shortage. We got oil shortages, grain shortages, coal shortages, every kind of fuckin’ shortage you can think of, but there ain't no asshole shortage. Assholism is a dominant trait.”
― Timothy Hallinan, The Four Last Things

“St. Francis of Assisi: Start by doing what’s necessary; then do what’s possible; and suddenly you will be doing the impossible.”
― Timothy Hallinan, Little Elvises

“I heard what I'd learned against my will to identify as new age music. Aimless and spacey, it meandered from unresolved keyboard chord to unresolved keyboard chord with some somnolent noodling in place of melody. Drooling pianos, music to sleepwalk by.”
― Timothy Hallinan, Skin Deep

“Life is just there, to be made the best of, until it isn't. And that's all right, too.”
― Timothy Hallinan, The Fame Thief

“A shrill, glass-endangering scream of outrage from the direction of the stage yanked me around just in time to see the guitarist swing his gleaming back Stratocaster at the drummer's head. He struck with the kind of accuracy that comes only with years of practice and/or extremely vivid wishful thinking.”
― Timothy Hallinan, Rock of Ages

“Does the guy move around much? If he’s more mobile than, say, the average couch, Cho will probably lose him.”
― Timothy Hallinan, A Nail Through the Heart

“The chuckle is a perfectly acceptable form of laughter.”
― Timothy Hallinan, Breathing Water

“See, what happens in life, you try this and that, and if you're lucky, you find something that pleases you, that satisfies you, makes you feel good about yourself. If you're not lucky, you find things that hurt less than the other things do. So either way, what you do, you use that information to build a sort of house out of your life, does that make sense? As long as you stay inside those walls, in that floor plan, chances are you won't get creamed." He stretched out an arm, index finger extended, and indicated the rectangle of the room we were in. "Same rooms over and over again, but they're safe. You're trapped, but you're safe. And, of course, the joke is that you have to get as old as I am to understand that I could have walked through those walls anytime. That I should have. Into someplace small and quiet. Someplace I could get my arms around.”
― Timothy Hallinan, King Maybe

“Garry Disher (Australia) The Dragon Man Kittyhawk Down Snapshot Chain of Evidence Blood Moon Wyatt Whispering Death Port Vila Blues”
― Timothy Hallinan, Crashed

“Rebecca Pawel (1930s Spain) Death of a Nationalist Law of Return The Watcher in the Pine The Summer Snow”
― Timothy Hallinan, Crashed

“I made it worse. I lay there for months and months, obsessing over all the places I’d never go, and I gradually realized that many of the ones I most wanted to see were places I’d never heard of. That was when I began seeing my countries.” “How”
― Timothy Hallinan, King Maybe

“Fortunately for writers, literary characters don’t have unions.”
― Timothy Hallinan, Street Music

“these men signed up all those years ago for the full five-course meal, including the bitter dessert, and they got to this point without ever doing anything to push back from the table and use their lives to accomplish something useful.”
― Timothy Hallinan, The Hot Countries

“Jassy Mackenzie (South Africa) Random Violence Stolen Lives The Fallen Pale Horses”
― Timothy Hallinan, Crashed

“Bernie’s idea of packing is to empty his drawers onto the floor and then push the suitcase in front of him, wide open, until it’s full. When we get there he never has any sunglasses or toothpaste, but his books are packed alphabetically by author.”
― Timothy Hallinan, The Four Last Things / Everything But the Squeal / Skin Deep

“We all have our paradigms," I said. "Every generation has different ones. For my generation, it's books with covers. For yours it's selfies and what you ate for lunch and dwarfs doing calisthenics on YouTube.”
― Timothy Hallinan, Nighttown

“Magdalen Nabb (Italy) Death of an Englishman Death of a Dutchman Death in Springtime Death in Autumn The Marshal and the Madwoman The Marshal and the Murderer The Marshal’s Own Case The Marshal Makes His Report The Marshal at the Villa Torrini Property of Blood Some Bitter Taste The Innocent Vita Nuova”
― Timothy Hallinan, Crashed

“I took my own divinity where I could find it, and most of the time it was measured in small sips, usually delivered through natural beauty and acts of unprovoked kindness.”
― Timothy Hallinan, Fields Where They Lay

“The percentage of the world’s murder victims who are killed in libraries is statistically negligible.”
― Timothy Hallinan, Nighttown

“Fixers don’t get their hands dirty.”
― Timothy Hallinan, Nighttown