Peta Lee

“Bout a month ago. She came in Boxing Day but I put her out. She was begging people, not even tapping, but begging for drink.”
“She can’t have been disrupting ye, surely?” asked Maureen.
“See those old swines over there?” He gestured to his only customers. The old men heard him and their chat fell silent.
The barman raised his voice. “They were asking what they would get for their money. Auld swines, playing on the lassie’s weakness for the drink.” He lowered his voice. “That’s pensioners for ye — they can smell a bargain a mile off,” he muttered, as if the bargain-hunting skill of the elderly was an unspoken universal truth.”
― Denise Mina, Exile

“Scratching their fingernails on blackboards of futility.”
― John Sandford, Field of Prey

“as dark did with light and weakness with strength. Nothing was simple or pure;”
― John Hart, Redemption Road

“Violence,’ someone had once told Marnie, ‘isn’t what you think it is. It isn’t someone bursting into your home in the middle of the night. It’s a soft knock on the door in daylight. A knock that tells you the person outside has brought the worst possible news. News that’s going to change your life forever. Violence is waiting for a knock on the door, and realising your whole life is that knock.’

Violence isn’t what you think it is. And punishment isn’t prison. It’s waiting for that soft knock on the door. It’s never being free.”
― Sarah Hilary, Quieter Than Killing