“Keep practicing," he told her.
"Until I get it right?" she said. But he corrected her.

"No. Until you don't get it wrong.”

“I always tell young swimmers: 'Practice things until you can't get them wrong. Not until you get them right.”

“She did not send for him until she was afraid; she was not afraid until he undid her work; he did not undo her work until he was past loving her.”

“He clenched Nix's shoulders. 'Why did you hesitate? I saw you hesitate!' He shook her until her head lolled, while she grinned and said, 'Wheeee!”

“Justice is blind until she gets the person that blinded her.”

“But she's wrong about hell. You don't have to wait until you're dead to get there.”

“I don't think she realized how much she cared for him, or he for her, until the end. Hasn't someone said a woman may be known by the men who love her enough to die for her? (If they haven't, I claim the credit myself.)”

“When I created Quirke, he was 6ft 6in and blond. But then a woman reader wrote to me and said, 'Why do you keep saying his hair is blond? It's not. It's brown.' I wrote back to her and told her that, of course, she was right. So I darkened his hair and now that he's being played by Gabriel Byrne; with each successive book he gets a bit smaller and smaller.”

“My wife is always trying to get rid of me. The other day she told me to put the garbage out. I said to her I already did. She told me to go and keep an eye on it. ”

“In a low voice Sara told them about going to the park, seeing a man, and then not paying much attention to him until suddenly he was pushing a gun into her ribs as she unlocked her front door. “He said he had to kill me or someone would kill him.””