J.J. Toner > Quotes

“I took a mouthful of whiskey. Its oily warmth wrapped itself around my tongue and rummaged its way into every secret corner of my mouth.”
― J.J. Toner, The Black Orchestra Boxset - Books 1 - 3

“Blesset was snoring, the book on the floor beside his bunk. I smiled. There’s nothing like a good biography to induce sleep.”
― J.J. Toner, The Black Orchestra Boxset - Books 1 - 3

“The worry lines that inhabited his forehead were showing signs of colonising his bald head.”
― J.J. Toner, The Black Orchestra Boxset - Books 1 - 3

“The tea was strong enough to build a wall with.”
― J.J. Toner, The Black Orchestra Boxset - Books 1 - 3

“Ballymartle was another crossroads village. In the drizzle, it looked to me like a miserable place, but it had one thing that lifted my spirits: it had a railway station. We found a bench in a dilapidated shelter and sat down to wait for a train. Sunlight filtered through the drizzle and flooded the scene. Stretching as far as we could see on all sides were pale birch trees glistening, misshapen and tall, like thin, grey giants frozen in a hundred-year argument. For the first time since we landed on the beach, I began to relax. I closed my eyes. A voice called out after a while, and I opened my eyes. A man stood in a field beyond the opposite platform. I waved to him. “When’s the next train?” The man lifted his cap and scratched his head. “You could be in for a bit of a wait. The last one went through here ten years ago.”
― J.J. Toner, The Black Orchestra Boxset - Books 1 - 3

“people that we did see were hurrying with purpose toward warm destinations, pushing plumes of breath before them.”
― J.J. Toner, The Black Orchestra Boxset - Books 1 - 3

“SS-Gruppenführer Heydrich;”
― J.J. Toner, The Black Orchestra Boxset - Books 1 - 3

“That large, lugubrious black eye seemed to blame me for the whole miserable affair.”
― J.J. Toner, The Black Orchestra Boxset - Books 1 - 3

“The girl behind the marble desk could have been the receptionist at the entrance to Hades.”
― J.J. Toner, The Black Orchestra Boxset - Books 1 - 3

“I had suffered a severe shock at the hands of the Gestapo, but, for all his reassuring words, Uncle Reinhard scared me even more. He was the one in charge of the police.”
― J.J. Toner, The Black Orchestra Boxset - Books 1 - 3

“the sideboard. The farmhouses of Ireland are full of them: massive pieces of furniture fashioned in remote outhouses by self-taught cabinet-makers, veneered in polished walnut or oak and decorated with carved curlicues like brocade. This one stood on four squat splayed legs with clawed talons for feet; not the sort of furniture that you could comfortably turn your back on.”
― J.J. Toner, The Black Orchestra Boxset - Books 1 - 3

“The temperature was several degrees lower out on the water, the Baltic boasting its ever-present Arctic soul.”
― J.J. Toner, The Black Orchestra Boxset - Books 1 - 3

“Be careful when ye fight monsters, lest ye become one.”
― J.J. Toner, The Black Orchestra Boxset - Books 1 - 3

“A signpost showed Kinsale 3 miles to the left, Cork 12 miles to the right, Kinsale 3 miles straight ahead, and back the way we had come, Kinsale 4 miles.”
― J.J. Toner, The Black Orchestra Boxset - Books 1 - 3