Colin Cotterill

Honesty can be a dirty gift.

— Colin Cotterill

“Siri let out a silent puff of air. If he’d had a wife like this he would certainly have shot her long…

— Colin Cotterill

“May I ask how your revolution's going? Revolutions always go more smoothly around a campfire in the jungle than they do in…

— Colin Cotterill

“All right, here comes the philosophy. You can leave if you like but I suggest you stick it out. You don’t measure…

— Colin Cotterill

“The woman’s brain has two hemispheres,” she slurred. “One for loving, one for hating. They can operate quite competently at the same…

— Colin Cotterill

“I’m sure he doesn’t see it as aimless. We all have different goals. His are achievable.”

— Colin Cotterill

“More panic. More emergencies and disasters. Soon, emergencies fell into a sort of natural ranking: drop-everything emergencies, do-what-you-can emergencies, and you’ll just-have-to-wait…

— Colin Cotterill

“Encounters with the living always drained him more than those with the dead.”

— Colin Cotterill

“A good communist,” the man had said, “does not let go of the plough halfway across the paddy and leave the buffalo…

— Colin Cotterill

“I dreamed the world was an awful place,” he said. “It wasn’t a dream,” she told him.”

— Colin Cotterill

“Dipping a cockroach in ink and having it scamper around the page would have left more legible traces to the average reader.”

— Colin Cotterill

He put his hand on his forehead and scoured the French department of his memory for a word. He knew it was…

— Colin Cotterill

“You know, if this country just allowed a couple of hours between meetings, we might actually have time to achieve something.”

— Colin Cotterill

“Forget the planet, save the garden.”

— Colin Cotterill

“So, there it was in a nutshell. Poverty led him to religion, religion to education, education to lust, lust to communism. And…

— Colin Cotterill

“I am a seasoned field surgeon having survived some five hundred campaigns,’ said Siri. ‘I was educated in France and I speak…

— Colin Cotterill

“The least urgent souls on earth with a thousand obstacles and superstitions to interfere with the accomplishment of work.”

— Colin Cotterill

This skin, this hair, all this outside stuff. It isn't me. It's just my package. It's like the wrapper around the sweet;…

— Colin Cotterill

“Honesty can be a dirty gift. It can muddy a sparkling stream of memories.”

— Colin Cotterill

“There was nothing fake or added about him. He was all himself.”

— Colin Cotterill

“Human beings mistakenly believed alcohol was a disguise that stopped real life from recognizing them. In fact, it was just a temporary…

— Colin Cotterill

“He never tired of watching her breathe. Every night spent beside her was an honour.”

— Colin Cotterill

“Do you suppose it all means something? That we're being left clues? Perhaps. Then, no offense, but I fear they've badly overestimated…

— Colin Cotterill

“...socialism had somehow made time more flexible. There were often situations when 1 PM and 5 PM were interchangeable.”

— Colin Cotterill

“Old man,” she said. “Don’t you want to prepare or something?” “Prepare what?” “Yourself. For death.” Siri laughed. “Well, Bpoo. Let’s see.…

— Colin Cotterill