Top 100 Mick Herron Quotes (2026 Update)
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51. “But I came to recognise that there will always be those who will do everything in their power to maintain the status quo, even when that so obviously favours such a small section of society.”

— Mick Herron

52. “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

53. “If words meant different things to different people, how could they be trusted?”

— Mick Herron

54. “Lamb seemed to consider several responses before settling for a fart.”

— Mick Herron

55. “This isn’t an Agatha Christie.” “I don’t care if it’s a Dan Brown.”

— Mick Herron

56. “If no sober day was wasted, then nobody could take one from her. Even if today brought a slip, the total would stay the same. All that would happen wag that she would not be adding to it. It was like money in the bank. If you missed a deposit, that didn’t mean the sum grew smaller.”

— Mick Herron

57. “Such observations came naturally to Judd, who could no more look at a woman without assessing her bedability than he could see a microphone without minting a soundbite. She smiled – she had recognised him, of course – then replaced the bottle in its bucket and moved away. He’d leave a decent tip, and get her number. He was supposed to be behaving himself, for reasons of marital harmony, but a waitress hardly counted, for God’s sake.”

— Mick Herron

58. “Her life was not what she might have wanted it to be, but that was no reason for destroying what it was.”

— Mick Herron

59. “Hope you’ve had your jabs,′ said Lamb. ‘You’re going to Gloucestershire.”

— Mick Herron

60. “So she was waiting for the lecture; prolonged silence always led to the lecture. It was the last thing Sarah needed, and a list of the first things would have filled a book: a hug, a bath, an ear, some sympathy.”

— Mick Herron

61. “There were so many things age could do to you; so few you could do in return.”

— Mick Herron

62. “Those young-man dreams of living each day as if it were your last, they wore off; showed up, in the cold light of after-fifty, for the magpie treasures they were.”

— Mick Herron

63. “Conspiracy theory is bloomed at the rate of one hundred and forty characters a second.”

— Mick Herron

64. “For a tiny moment it felt good to have something to blame for all this, even if what he was blaming was the internet, which could never be made to care.”

— Mick Herron

65. “Cantor approved of a system which had allowed him to get rich, but he also believed in pulling the ladder up afterwards. If everyone succeeded, nobody did. Anything else was basically communism.”

— Mick Herron

66. “He’d kill me. And he could do it, too. He’s killed people before.” “That’s what he wants you to think,” River said. “You’re saying he hasn’t?” “I’m saying he’s not allowed to kill staff. Health and safety.”

— Mick Herron

67. “Lamb had known where he hid his spare keys: in an envelope secured to the underside of his desk. “The second most obvious place,” Lamb called it, the first being if Ho had just Sellotaped them to his forehead.”

— Mick Herron

68. “Keyboards were weaponised, trolls emerged from under bridges, and somewhere along the way free elections turned into free-for-alls, as if democracy were a shaggy dog story to which a joke president was the punchline. All those decades of the arms race, and it turned out there was no greater damage you could inflict on a state than ensure it was led by an idiot. Somewhere, someone, probably, was laughing.”

— Mick Herron

69. “Having clean hands was an unusual criterion for the role, but his predecessor’s shenanigans had ensured that, on this occasion at least, it was politic.”

— Mick Herron

70. “Jackson Lamb had been legend in his day, they said, but they said that about Robert de Niro.”

— Mick Herron

71. “Number Ten was a warren, as if an architect had been collecting corridors and decided to use them all up at once.”

— Mick Herron

72. “There was always the temptation to imagine tourists had no life other than the one you saw them leading; that they were constantly wowing at landmarks and wearing inappropriate shirts.”

— Mick Herron

73. “There are worse things an alcoholic can have on her hands than time, but not many.”

— Mick Herron

74. “Jesus, have you learned nothing? When they tell you to take it one day at a time, that doesn’t mean do a memory wipe each morning.”

— Mick Herron

75. “Like smokers unable to smell their habit on their clothes, drinkers always thought themselves unaffected.”

— Mick Herron

76. “But then Miles was an agent of chaos, intentionally or not, and wherever he hung his hat, plaster was likely to fall.”

— Mick Herron

77. “A waitress had joined the gathering throng; was cruising with a bottle of fizz, topping glasses, all bright-eyed and shiny. Sarah guessed someone had once told her her eyes were her best feature, because she was holding them open wider than natural. God, the hoops you had to jump through. It was a wonder foot binding had slipped off the agenda. She remembered Ginger Rogers’ remark: that she’d made the same moves Fred did, only backwards, wearing heels.”

— Mick Herron

78. “And remember, all of us are lying in the gutter. But some of you are circling the drain.”

— Mick Herron

79. “That was what life was: you worked, sometimes you couldn’t sleep, and your future was already being shaped. Until something crashed into it and knocked everything out of true.”

— Mick Herron

80. “It was certainly true that she never did anything straight that she could do sideways.”

— Mick Herron

81. “If everyone succeeded, nobody did.”

— Mick Herron

82. “Well, I personally don’t plan to do much. But if you think our little gang of Jason Stillborns’ll pass up the chance to mount their own private op, you’ve forgotten what testosterone smells like. I’ve already had Dander in here wanting to know if she can have a gun.”

— Mick Herron

83. “You either cleaned up other people’s messes or you didn’t – and that was the class system for you, right there.”

— Mick Herron

84. “He looked like a posterboy for something expensive but ultimately soulless, like alcohol-free lager, or a New Labour policy initiative.”

— Mick Herron

85. “First Desk enjoyed coincidences the way she liked happy endings: outside of fiction, they were as trustworthy as a Tinder Profile.”

— Mick Herron

86. “The air in the house shifted, a rearrangement she could feel even in the study.”

— Mick Herron

87. “His tone was polite, but his eyes weren’t.”

— Mick Herron

88. “We’re Slough House’, he said. Then added, ‘Hasta la vista baby,’ before following the others down the stairs.”

— Mick Herron

89. “That old saw about learning from the past didn’t always mean studying monstrous historical movements to ensure they never happened again. It could indicate an intention to perfect their trajectories, in the hope that they’d triumph next time.”

— Mick Herron

90. “Catherine had long come to the conclusion that removing the aroma of stale tobacco would be a three-step process. First you’d have to steam-clean the soft furnishings, then paint the walls, then knock the building down and scatter the rubble.”

— Mick Herron

91. “Besides, if his party stood for anything, it was for defending the right of the strong to flourish, which meant preventing the weak from taking up unnecessary space.”

— Mick Herron

92. “Even I’d put me way down on a list of people worth killing. You’d have to be halfway through the Cabinet first. Not to mention whoever invented fruit-flavoured beer.”

— Mick Herron

93. “The silence grew closer, as if the effort someone was making to be quiet were inching through the house.”

— Mick Herron

94. “Because we both know the tide’s turning. The decent people in this country are sick to death of being held hostage by mad liberals in Brussels, and the sooner we take control over our own future, our own borders –.”

— Mick Herron

95. “That it was his habit to call fake news on anything showing himself or the government in a bad light. That it was also his habit to proclaim fake news a good thing, since it forced people to question what they heard. That such contradictions allowed him to claim victory in every argument.”

— Mick Herron

96. “But there was nothing, and never would be. Learning that was one thing. Living with it, another entirely. Careful.”

— Mick Herron

97. “If you own the platforms on which people conduct their business, you effectively own that business. And if you own the platforms on which those same people pursue their leisure interests, you effectively own their lives.”

— Mick Herron

98. “On a rock in the middle of the lake, a pelican stretched its wings. It was like watching a golf umbrella do aerobics.”

— Mick Herron

99. “Unheard objections were like unacknowledged offspring: If no one knows about them, could they really be said to exist?”

— Mick Herron

100. “All that just to get Taverner’s attention?” said Catherine, once they were gone. “Well, I considered leaving a horse’s head in her bed,” said Lamb. “But the logistics are insane.”

— Mick Herron