Barry Maitland > Quotes

“obtuse.”
― Barry Maitland, Spider Trap

“The fifth principle [of Arne Naess's principles of deep ecology] states that the flourishing of both human and non-human life requires a substantial decrease of human population. As I said, we are a plague, and our population is out of control. And we don't want to die.”
― Barry Maitland

“You're a liberal, right? You adore positive logic, and you have a certain political awareness, which maybe is the conscience of the privileged.”
― Barry Maitland, Silvermeadow

“It's turning a warrior race, the hammer of the Scots, the butchers of the Welsh and Irish, the ravagers of half the globe, into a docile herd of consumers who care for nothing but woolly jumpers and soft music”
― Barry Maitland, Silvermeadow

“But it's also very crass, of course, so commercial' 'It's worse than that, Harriet. It's deadening, it feeds on life.' 'How do you mean?' Kathy asked. 'I mean that it feeds on all the real places around here, all the real towns and villages that have been steadily growing and developing for a thousand years, and are now having the life-blood sucked out of them by this great hulking parasite!' His eyes blazed at the word. 'And I also mean that it takes the life out of people, too. It is an offence against our natures, Kathy. It sanitises us, deodorises us, and turns us into shadows. Look at them!”
― Barry Maitland, Silvermeadow

“I was able to convince them that the Starling case is not, essentially, about extortion, kidnapping, decapitation or murder. It is about postage stamps.’ ‘Postage stamps?’ ‘More particularly about the forgery of rare postage stamps, which is fraud, our bailiwick.”
― Barry Maitland, The Chalon Heads

“you know how our high street banks got started? From the fortunes Mr Lloyd and Mr Barclay made from making Jamaica into a concentration camp for slaves to grow sugar. Then the world sugar price collapsed and we gave them independence and pissed off. Like walking out on this totally traumatised family you’ve been bashing up for several hundred years.”
― Barry Maitland, Spider Trap

“That’s genius, you see. The masterstroke that no one recognises until it’s been pulled off.”
― Barry Maitland, Spider Trap

“Harriet Rutter gave a delighted chuckle. 'And yet we keep coming back, do we not, Robbie?' 'Aye,' he nodded, calm again, wiping some spittle from his chin. 'We keep coming back. The only thing that can be said for it is that: just as it has no past, so it also has no future. It didn't grow out of anything that was here before and nothing will grow out of it; it will not age or acquire the patina of time, and no archaeologist will ever excavate its ruins; for when its usefulness is over its owners, caring nothing for it, will simply bulldoze it, sweep it away, and not a trace of it will remain.”
― Barry Maitland, Silvermeadow