Luke Smitherd > Quotes

“The only thing in this world more irresistible to human beings than greed is curiosity, and the need to know the answers.”
― Luke Smitherd, The Stone Man

“And for a second she weakens, and the way she used to look at him flashes across her face, and then it's gone, replaced by near hate. It's the saddest thing he's ever seen. It's a tragedy.”
― Luke Smitherd, The Physics Of The Dead

“then he would feel like he was finally going crazy. It never happened though. Always the tease, never the relief.”
― Luke Smitherd, A Head Full Of Knives

“Memories are jagged little rocks, sharp little chunks of glass, and your mind is mud. Memories sink into it, and you think they’ve disappeared. But they haven’t. They’re just lying there, waiting for a hot day when certain parts of the mud melt and make those blades available to questing feet.”
― Luke Smitherd, He Waits - A Book of Strange and Disturbing Horror

“we all are never one person alone. Different sides of us, brought out by different situations, and we can never truly know who we will be from one day to the next. You can be one of them more than you are any of the others, and decide that is you ... but when you are caught unawares, the dice of your personality is rolled and the outcome is not given by any means.”
― Luke Smitherd, The Stone Man

“the things you ‘just don’t do’ and the things you ‘just do’, in my eyes, are the actions of sheep. Act the way you feel, not the way you’re expected to. Say what you mean.”
― Luke Smitherd, The Stone Man

“All men are frightened. The more intelligent they are, the more they are frightened. —George S. Patton”
― Luke Smitherd, The Stone Man

“One thing you will discover is that life is based less than you think on what you’ve learned and much more than you think on what you have inside you from the beginning. —Bret ‘The Hitman’ Hart, quoting Mark Helprin”
― Luke Smitherd, The Stone Man

“When I was still truly young, The Man in White came to my family’s house on a cold Saturday morning in November.”
― Luke Smitherd, Kill Someone

“I must admit, I was this close to telling Rob to fuck off at that point and just get busy with my personal program; he could leave me to get on with the real stuff, thank you very much.”
― Luke Smitherd, How To Be A Vigilante: A Diary

“deliberately vague, attention-seeking Facebook statuses are for thirteen-year-old girls.”
― Luke Smitherd, The Stone Man

“If you can’t be true to your own word, then what have you got? Shaun”
― Luke Smitherd, The Stone Man

“I guess it’s because it’s so damn slow; some people are just thinking it’ll be all right. Weird, really. When it’s just one thing, and so easily avoided, if you know it’s coming … you’d think it would be the easiest thing in the world to prevent any more loss of life.”
― Luke Smitherd, The Stone Man

“But that makes sense. We'd have to see things differently in order to be able to handle eternity.”
― Luke Smitherd, A Head Full Of Knives

“He’s temporarily taken by that childish madness that a lot of us never lose, that destructive instinct that is both a rush and a sense of failing. In that moment he wants to show her, to get back at her for all the perceived wrongs she’s done him.”
― Luke Smitherd, In The Darkness

“And even the lovers, they don’t get that ten percent. They never get your very private thoughts, the little dark ones that you think and aren’t even sure that you mean. The ones that the privacy of your mind frees you to think and dismiss without fear or judgement. No one ever gets them.”
― Luke Smitherd, In The Darkness

“He nodded slightly, and”
― Luke Smitherd, The Stone Man

“hard knocks came on the cubicle door. Then silence. My blood turned into water. More”
― Luke Smitherd, Kill Someone

“if all you have to offer are criticisms on the people making the decisions, without being able to offer any better decisions yourself, then I suggest you reserve your judgement.”
― Luke Smitherd, The Stone Man

“Jjeeps”
― Luke Smitherd, The Stone Man

“Faust complained about having two souls in his breast, but I harbor a whole crowd of them and they quarrel.”
― Luke Smitherd, A Head Full Of Knives

“He’d cried a bit when he sat down, then stared off into the sky once he’d done so, thinking about, of all things, Sheffield United, and the realisation that if they ever got back into the Premiership then he wouldn’t be around to see it. That had nearly set him off again, but instead, he’d had a thought that made him smirk in the darkness. Even without the Stone Men’s arrival, he didn’t think he’d have lived to see that. Paul”
― Luke Smitherd, The Stone Man

“chanting. Neither any of the C.I.s, or this man here,”
― Luke Smitherd, The Stone Man

“I know I’m obviously in your head, but I think … I think what I see around me, the walls … I think it’s a representation of your mind, Minnie. I think I can see your thoughts.”
― Luke Smitherd, In The Darkness

“that I suddenly wanted to know what he had to say, despite my normal loathing for this kind of chavvy little twat.”
― Luke Smitherd, The Stone Man

“I have given you room to provide an alternative solution to the problem, and unless I’m mistaken, you haven’t managed to do so; if all you have to offer are criticisms on the people making the decisions, without being able to offer any better decisions yourself, then I suggest you reserve your judgement.” I”
― Luke Smitherd, The Stone Man

“That was when something hit me. The white suit he was wearing wasn't just a fashion choice. I mean, who actually dresses like that? Nobody, at least nobody in reality. Yeah, Ok, his big friend was in standard spook/secret service/bodyguard gear, but this guy? He was a walking cliche. It was like somebody said to me, Hey Chris, can you imagine a Colombian drug lord for me please? And this guy had popped up as the end result.”
― Luke Smitherd, Kill Someone

“This country is never silent. Even on top of our mountains, there are distant motorways below and passing planes above.”
― Luke Smitherd, The Stone Man