“She knows what it is to be sad and miserable, but those emotions are almost enjoyable. They throw moments of happiness and laughter into sharper relief.” — Simon Mawer Copy Share Image
I was a boarding school product from the age of eight, and I hated it. Though I do have a theory that boarding school… — Simon Mawer Copy Share Image
Guernsey itself was overcrowded, but its cliffs were utterly empty. I spent a wonderful year with a friend, climbing them. It was sheer magic:… — Simon Mawer Copy Share Image
You can tell nothing from a man's appearance, nothing except the depths of your own prejudice. — Simon Mawer Copy Share Image
Sometimes I think that novelists suffer from P.C.S.: Perpetual Childhood Syndrome. — Simon Mawer Copy Share Image
When you look around now we have the war on terror. Yes, okay, the World Trade Center was sort of like a single act… — Simon Mawer Copy Share Image
Grief and guilt. A powerful combination. Guilt like a liquid, a thin liquor, seeping everywhere, informing everything, saturating the whole-corrosive, like seawater, scented with… — Simon Mawer Copy Share Image
When writing fiction, you only have to know enough to be convincing on the page. I mean really convincing, of course - but you… — Simon Mawer Copy Share Image
Only occasionally do I read new fiction. Most of my reading is heavily dictated by what I'm writing at the time. — Simon Mawer Copy Share Image
“I'm fond of her." Oh yeah? Fond are you? I've heard of fond. I expect old erection here" - she pointed to the tube of DNA - "was fond of his victim. Fond is a prude's word, Ben. You fancy her. That's what you say. You fancy Miss Library something painful. And who knows?" She grinned, gap-toothed, like the Wife… — Simon Mawer Copy Share
Most of those people who saw themselves as literary types at university became bank managers. — Simon Mawer Copy Share Image
“Numbers have no hidden meanings, you say. But it is the hidden meanings in words that make them so wonderful.” — Simon Mawer Copy Share Image
“It wasn’t the way that Viktor and Katalin looked at each other, it was the way they didn’t look. It wasn’t the notes, it… — Simon Mawer Copy Share Image
