Linwood Barclay > Quotes

“Sometimes, it's easier to tell a stranger something very personal. It's like there's less risk, opening yourself up to someone who doesn't know you.”
― Linwood Barclay (No Time For Goodbye)

“Dear Anyone: This is a letter from one anyone to another anyone, no names required, because nobody really knows anyway. Names don't make a hell of a lot of difference. The world is made up entirely of strangers. Millions and millions of them. Everyone is a stranger to everyone else. Sometimes we think we know other people, especially those we supposedly are close to, but if we really knew them, why are we so often surprised by the shit they do? Like, parents are always surprised by what their kids will do. They raise them from the time they are babies, spend each and every day with them, think they're these goddamn fucking angels, and then one day the cops come to the door and say hey, guess what parents? Your kid just bashed some other kid's head in with a baseball bat. Or you're the kid, and you think things are pretty fucking OK, and then one day this guy who's supposed to be your dad says so long, have a nice life. And you think, what the fuck is this? So years later, your mom ends up living with another guy, and he seems OK, but you think, when's it coming? That's what life is. Life is always asking yourself, when's it coming? Because if it hasn't come for a long time, you know you're fucking due. All the best, Anyone.”
― Linwood Barclay, No Time for Goodbye

“It occurred to me that with all of today's technologies, there were now more ways than ever to know with abosolute certainty that no one wanted to get in touch with me”
― Linwood Barclay, Fear the Worst

“I don't subscribe much to the belief that things happen for a reason, that there's some higher power at the controls, directing all of us like we're in some cosmic summer stock production. Shit just happens is more or less my philosophy.”
― Linwood Barclay, Too Close to Home

“It's hard to make things right for everyone."

"But if everybody helped just one person, lots of people would get helped.”
― Linwood Barclay, The Accident

“If being an asshole was all it took to get yourself killed, you and I would have been dead long ago.”
― Linwood Barclay, Too Close to Home

“You think, if you're dying a little each day, how does life manage to stretch out so long”
― Linwood Barclay, No Time for Goodbye

“if everyone in the world refused to work for assholes, there’d be almost total unemployment,”
― Linwood Barclay, The Twenty-Three

“She cried herself to sleep, and I held her until she stopped. I rolled over and pushed my face into the pillow. I figured if I could muffle my own crying, I would not wake her.”
― Linwood Barclay, Too Close to Home

“All the places my mind took me were places I did not want to go.”
― Linwood Barclay, Trust Your Eyes

“How we’re all strangers to one another, how we often know the least about those we’re closest to.”
― Linwood Barclay, No Time for Goodbye

“Technology allowed us to share our photos with more people now than ever before, but where would these captured moments in time be in twenty years? On some outdated piece of hardware at the bottom of a landfill site? What happened to memories you couldn’t hold between your thumb and forefinger?”
― Linwood Barclay, A Tap on the Window

“Heartbreak, she believed, was worse than just about any disease you could think of.”
― Linwood Barclay, Take Your Breath Away

“And the road to hell is paved with good intentions....”
― Linwood Barclay, No Time for Goodbye

“You didn't need brains to hold office; you only needed votes.”
― Linwood Barclay, Trust Your Eyes

“Where does some unspeakably evil thing like you retire to?

Nabler shrugged. "Florida.”
― Linwood Barclay, Whistle

“Maybe this was what marriage was, Gilbert mused. Unrelenting unhappiness, but at least you had someone to talk to.”
― Linwood Barclay, Find You First

“read”
― Linwood Barclay, No Time for Goodbye

“He was pretty good at Family Feud. It was his favorite game show because, unlike, say, Jeopardy! or Who Wants to be a Millionaire?, you didn't actually have to know anything, you just had to be able to guess what people thought the answer was.”
― Linwood Barclay, Never Saw it Coming

“found Rolly in his office, sitting at his computer, staring at something on the monitor. He pointed at the screen. “They want more testing. Pretty soon, we won’t have any time to teach them anything. We’ll just test them from the moment they get here to the moment they go home.”
― Linwood Barclay, No Time for Goodbye

“She says there’s no one more invisible in this world than a middle-aged woman.”
― Linwood Barclay, Find You First

“very”
― Linwood Barclay, No Time for Goodbye

“When you leave the spoons to dry like this without turning them over, the water ends up leaving a mark,” he’d say to my mother, holding up one of the offensive items of cutlery.”
― Linwood Barclay, Never Look Away

“if everyone in the world refused to work for assholes, there’d be almost total unemployment, and”
― Linwood Barclay, The Twenty-Three

“A fucked-up childhood is a writer’s best friend.”
― Linwood Barclay, The Lie Maker

“What is hate speech, exactly? It's hate speech when you don't like something I've said. But when you attack me for what I've said, can't your words also be defined as hateful?”
― Linwood Barclay, Elevator Pitch

“auburn in color, and a little too much”
― Linwood Barclay, A Tap on the Window

“ahead”
― Linwood Barclay, No Time for Goodbye

“with”
― Linwood Barclay, I Will Ruin You

“...I kept wishing I had a decent man in my life, someone who could be a real father to Patty, because I believe from the bottom of my heart that it takes a mother and a father to raise a child, but it also has to be a mother and a father who give a shit, you know what I'm saying.”
― Linwood Barclay, Fear the Worst