Quotes from book

Brighton Rock

“[Ida] "…It's a good world if you don't weaken."”

“You can’t conceive, my child, nor can I or anyone the … appalling … strangeness of the mercy of God.”

“A brain was only capable of what it could conceive, and it couldn't conceive what it had never experienced”

“[After Hale's cremation] She came out of the crematorium, and there from the twin towers above her head fumed the very last of Fred, a thin stream of grey smoke from the ovens. Fred dropped indistinguishable grey ash on the pink blossoms: he became part of the smoke nuisance over London, and Ida wept.”

“[Cubitt hurling insults at Pinky after he refuses to lend him money] The picture Cubitt drew had got nothing to do with him: it was like the pictures men drew of Christ, the image of their own sentimentality. …He was like a professor describing to a stranger some place he had only read in books:…when all the time it was a country the stranger knew…”

“…the Boy sat silent. It was he this time who was being warned: life held the vitriol bottle and warned him: I'll spoil your looks.”

“[Rose, taken out for the evening by Pinkie] She had an immense store of trivial memories and when she wasn't living in the future she was living in the past. As for the present – she got through that as quickly as she could, running away from things, running towards things, so that her voice was always a little breathless, her heart pounding at an escape or an expectation.”

“He knew everything in theory, nothing in practice… He knew the moves, he'd never played the game.”

“… it was the little things which tripped you up.”

“[Re Hale] He only felt his loneliness after his third gin.”

“[About Pinkie's character] The word murder conveyed no more to him than the word 'box', 'collar', 'giraffe.”

“Man is made by the places in which he lives…”

“People talk," Ida Arnold said. "People talk all the time.”

“…he knew there wasn't a soul in the mob he could trust – except perhaps Dallow. That didn't matter. You couldn't make mistakes when you trusted nobody.”

“[Priest at Hale's cremation] "…our brother is at this moment reabsorbed in the universal spirit."”

“[About Pinkie's inability to empathise] The imagination hadn't awoken. That was his strength. He couldn't see through other people's eyes, or feel with their nerves. Only the music made him uneasy.”