Philip Kerr > Quotes

“On the whole it’s not wise to remind the devil that he’s the devil, especially when we were getting on so well.”
― Philip Kerr, The Lady from Zagreb

“When you get a cat to catch the mice in your kitchen, you can't expect it to ignore the rats in the cellar.”
― Philip Kerr, March Violets

“A man's bookseller should keep his confidence, like his physician. What can become of a world where every man knows what another man reads? Why, sir, books would become like quacks' potions, with every mountebank in the newspapers claiming one volume's superiority over another.”
― Philip Kerr, Dark Matter: The Private Life of Sir Isaac Newton

“I didn’t know you were interested in politics,’ I said. ‘I’m not,’ he said. ‘But isn’t that how Hitler got elected in the first place: too many people who didn’t give a shit who was running the country?”
― Philip Kerr, Berlin Noir: March Violets / The Pale Criminal / A German Requiem

“it is always the women who rebuild the civilizations that the men have done their best to destroy”
― Philip Kerr, A Man Without Breath

“I made an appointment to see him and then ordered another beer. While I was drinking it I did some doodling on a piece of paper, the algebraic kind that you hope will help you think more clearly. When I finished doing that, I was more confused than ever. Algebra was never my strong subject.”
― Philip Kerr, March Violets

“Sometimes a stupid man is only a couple of good guesses away from looking clever.”
― Philip Kerr, The Lady from Zagreb

“Looking round the room I found there were so many false eyelashes flapping at me that I was beginning to feel a draught.”
― Philip Kerr, March Violets

“Being a Berlin cop in 1942 was a little like putting down mousetraps in a cage full of tigers.”
― Philip Kerr

“The real question here is what happens to you, Gunther. In many ways you’re a useful fellow to have around. Like a bent coat hanger in a toolbox, you’re not something that was ever designed for a specific job, but you do manage to come in useful sometimes.”
― Philip Kerr, Prague Fatale

“Winter came early that year. Snow filled the gray December air like fragments of torn-up hope”
― Philip Kerr, The Other Side of Silence

“All men come to resemble their fathers. That isn’t a tragedy, but you need a hell of a sense of humour to handle it.”
― Philip Kerr, A Quiet Flame

“A man might think he can stare into the abyss without falling in but sometimes the abyss stares back. Sometimes the abyss exerts a strange effect on your sense of balance.”
― Philip Kerr, The Lady from Zagreb

“One day I hoped some thoughtful historian would point out the close connection between the Mercedes-Benz motor car and Germany’s favorite dictator and that the Lord would find a way to pay these bastards back for their help in bringing the Nazis to power and keeping them there.”
― Philip Kerr, The Lady from Zagreb

“Compared with the person who had decorated and furnished the place, the Archduke Ferdinand had been blessed with the taste of a troupe of Turkish circus dwarves.”
― Philip Kerr, Berlin Noir: March Violets / The Pale Criminal / A German Requiem

“Looking at him I felt as if I had just met a powerful gorilla while at the same time being in possession of the world's last banana.”
― Philip Kerr, The Lady from Zagreb

“Sometimes I think God is just the devil pretending to be nice.”
― Philip Kerr, Prayer

“It was an interesting dilemma and pointed up a real point of difference between Nazism and Communism as forms of government: there was no room for the individual in Soviet Russia; conversely not everything was state-managed in Germany. The Nazis never shot anyone for being stupid, inefficient or just plain unlucky. Generally speaking the Nazis looked for a reason to shoot you, the commies were quite happy to shoot you without any reason at all - but when you're going to be shot, what's the difference?”
― Philip Kerr, A Man Without Breath

“If he was a member of the human race at all, Neumann was its least attractive specimen. His eyebrows, twitching and curling like two poisoned caterpillars, were joined together by an irregular scribble of poorly matched hair. Behind thick glasses that were almost opaque with greasy thumbprints, his grey eyes were shifty and nervous, searching the floor as if he expected that at any moment he would be lying flat on it. Cigarette smoke poured out from between teeth that were so badly stained with tobacco they looked like two wooden fences.”
― Philip Kerr, March Violets

“the man who succeeds is the man who is able to reduce problems to their simplest terms and who has the courage of his convictions - despite the objections of intellectuals. The courage to speak, perhaps, even when he believes that what he is suggesting sounds like madness.”
― Philip Kerr, A Man Without Breath

“Horror does not need the dark, and sometimes a truly evil deed shuns the shadows.”
― Philip Kerr

“Behind my office, to the south-east, was Police Headquarters, and I imagined all the good hard work that was being done there to crack down on Berlin's crime. Villainies like speaking disrespectfully of the Führer, displaying a 'Sold Out' sign in your butcher's shop window, not giving the Hitler Salute, and homosexuality. That was Berlin under the National Socialist Government: a big, haunted house with dark corners, gloomy staircases, sinister cellars, locked rooms and a whole attic full of poltergeists on the loose, throwing books, banging doors, breaking glass, shouting in the night and generally scaring the owners so badly that there were times when they were ready to sell up and get out. But most of the time they just stopped up their ears, covered their blackened eyes and tried to pretend that there was nothing wrong. Cowed with fear, they spoke very little, ignoring the carpet moving underneath their feet, and their laughter was the thin, nervous kind that always accompanies the boss's little joke.”
― Philip Kerr, March Violets

“He was as obsequious as a Japanese ivy plant. Wringing his hands as if he hoped to squeeze the milk of human kindness from his fingernails, ...”
― Philip Kerr, The One from the Other

“Just when you thought that things couldn’t get any worse, you find out that they’ve always been a lot worse than you thought they were. And then they get worse.”
― Philip Kerr, The Pale Criminal

“She was shot dead, in cold blood," he said bitterly. I could see we were in for a long night. I got out my cigarettes.”
― Philip Kerr, March Violets

“Believe me, I know a lot about harm's way. It turns sharp left off the road to Shitsville when you're least expecting it.”
― Philip Kerr

“There is evil in the best of us, of course; but perhaps just a little bit more in the worst of us.”
― Philip Kerr, Prussian Blue

“My only choice was between the disastrous and the unpalatable. A very German choice.”
― Philip Kerr

“At least that was what she had told me. You never know with women. What they tell you and what they don't tell you is a very long bridge across a very wide river with all kinds of fish.”
― Philip Kerr

“His face was all sharp angles, thin and pointed, like something Pythagoras had doodled on the corner of his scroll before getting on with his theorem.”
― Philip Kerr, A Quiet Flame