Mick Herron > Quotes

“Those who write the rules rarely suffer their weight.”
― Mick Herron, Spook Street

“Lamb said, ‘If you had issues with him, I could have spoken to HR. Arranged an intervention.’ He tapped Moody’s shoulder with his foot. ‘Breaking his neck without going through your line manager, that shit stays on your record.”
― Mick Herron, Slow Horses

“as every office worker knows, it’s not the hope that kills you. It’s knowing it’s the hope that kills you that kills you.”
― Mick Herron, Real Tigers

“This was the blissful break when the world seemed a safer place, between the end of the Cold War and about ten minutes later.”
― Mick Herron, Slow Horses

“Like most forms of corruption, it began with men in suits.”
― Mick Herron, Real Tigers

“He eyed her critically. "You look like all your birthdays came at once."
"I look happy to you?"
"No, old. Am I the only one round here speaks English?”
― Mick Herron, London Rules

“How's your career looking?'
'Well, I don't have an arse two inches in front of my nose, so my view beats yours.”
― Mick Herron, Slow Horses

“as with any mystery, you have to address the four Fs.” No one dared ask. “Who the fuck, what the fuck, where the fuck and why the fuck,” Lamb continued”
― Mick Herron, Joe Country

“She started drawing up a mental list of everyone she didn’t trust, and had to stop immediately. She didn’t have all day.”
― Mick Herron, Dead Lions

“Fear lives in the guts. That’s where it makes its home. It moves in, shifts stuff around; empties a space for itself—it likes the echoes its wingbeats make. It likes the smell of its own farts.”
― Mick Herron, Slow Horses

“And no amount of Kevlar offered protection from a woman’s disappointment.”
― Mick Herron, Spook Street

“One of the unforeseen consequences of Brexit, reflected Whelan, was that it had elevated to positions of undue prominence any number of nasty little toerags. Ah well. The people had spoken.”
― Mick Herron, London Rules

“But the first bedtime story he ever did read me was Kim.' River could tell she recognised the title, so didn't elaborate. 'After that, well, Conrad, Greene. Somerset Maugham.'
'Ashenden.'
'You get the picture. For my twelfth birthday, he bought me le Carré's collected works. I can still remember what he said about them.'
They're made up. But that doesn't mean they're not true.”
― Mick Herron, Slow Horses

“If Moscow rules meant watch your back, London rules meant cover your arse. Moscow rules had been written on the streets, but London rules were devised in the corridors of Westminster, and the short version read: someone always pays. Make sure it isn’t you. Nobody knew that better than Jackson Lamb. And nobody played it better than Di Taverner.”
― Mick Herron, Slow Horses

“The thing about somebody else's car was, it was automatically an all-terrain vehicle.”
― Mick Herron, Joe Country

“He and I, we're friends. Does that sound odd? Me, friends with a pinko journalist?'
Nothing sounded odd to Lamb; except, perhaps, that people had friends.”
― Mick Herron, Slow Horses

“He has the people skills of a natterjack toad, but he knows his way round the ether.”
― Mick Herron, Slow Horses

“When he’d joined the Service he’d been in Psych Eval, which had involved evaluating operational strategies for psychological impact – on targets as well as agents – but had also meant carrying out individual assessments; who was stressed, who’d benefit from a change of routine, and who was a psychopath. Every organisation had a few, usually at management level, and it was handy to know who they were in case there was an emergency, or an office party.”
― Mick Herron, London Rules

“Half of the future is buried in the past. That was the prevailing Service culture.”
― Mick Herron, Slow Horses

“Why am I telling you this?'
'So you'll have an excuse to kill me?'
'That's probably it.”
― Mick Herron, Slow Horses

“It turned out that in the governance of a nation’s security, many absurd situations had to be worked around: a toxic clown in the Foreign Office [Boris Johnson], a state visit by a narcissistic bed-wetter [Trump], the tendency of the electorate to 'jump off' the occasional cliff [Brexit].”
― Mick Herron, Joe Country

“it’d be like choosing between Jeremy Clarkson and Piers Morgan in a bare-knuckle death match. There ought to be a way both could lose.”
― Mick Herron, Joe Country

“all the work’s done low on the food chain. Everyone else just has meetings.”
― Mick Herron, Dead Lions

“all the flexibility of a rhinoceros in a corridor.”
― Mick Herron, Real Tigers

“Having a cat is one small step from having two cats, and to be a single woman within a syllable of fifty in possession of two cats is tantamount to declaring life over.”
― Mick Herron, Dead Lions

“Everyone wanted a life less ordinary. And only a tiny minority ever got it, and even they probably didn’t appreciate it much.”
― Mick Herron, Slow Horses

“MARTIN KREUTZMER LIKED TO read the Guardian, because it kept him in touch with that strain of self-lacerating smugness which hoped to inherit the earth, but would have no clue what to do with it.”
― Mick Herron, Joe Country

“On discovering a fire, the instructions ran, shout Fire and try to put it out. It was useful, heart-of the matter advice, and could be extended almost indefinitely in any direction. On discovering your husband's guests are arseholes, shout Arseholes and try to put them out.”
― Mick Herron, Down Cemetery Road

“The public was like one of those huge Pacific jellyfish; one enormous, pulsating mass of indifference, drifting wherever the current carried it; an organism without a motive, ambition or original sin to call its own, but which somehow believed, in whatever passed for its brain, that it chose its own leaders and had a say in its own destiny.”
― Mick Herron, Real Tigers

“We don’t like being out of the loop.”
“You’re always out of the loop. The loop’s miles away. Nearest you’ll get to being in the loop is when they make a documentary about it and show it on the History Channel. I thought you were aware of that.”
― Mick Herron, Dead Lions