Top 100 Richard Osman Quotes (2025 Update)
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51. “Of all the things to lose, to lose one’s mind? Let them take a leg or a lung; let them take anything before they take that. Before you become “poor Rosemary” or “poor Frank,” catching the last glimpses of the sun and seeing them for what they were. Before there were no more trips, no more games, no more Murder Clubs. Before there was no more you.”

— Richard Osman

52. “You need everything to change. That chaos is where you are able to hide yourself.”

— Richard Osman

53. “Whereas Joyce and Ron, you are the weather,” says Elizabeth. “You move as you choose, you act as you feel. You make things happen without fannying around worrying about what those things might be.”

— Richard Osman

54. “Because things are more fun for you when they’re not planned, and they were more fun for him when they were planned. It’s best to have one of each in every relationship.”

— Richard Osman

55. “Sitting in their gardens, doing a sudoku, knowing they had got away with murder.”

— Richard Osman

56. “You must die before your children, of course, because you have taught them to live without you. But not your dog.”

— Richard Osman

57. “Joyce doesn’t take her seriously, Ibrahim doesn’t take her seriously, Ron doesn’t take her seriously. They respect her, she thinks, they know they can rely on her, they take care of her – shudder – but they refuse to take her seriously. Who knew that was the secret all along?”

— Richard Osman

58. “We all have a sob story, but we don’t all go around killing people.”

— Richard Osman

59. “And, by the by, Joanna solved the mystery of my private messages. She went into my account and searched all of them for me. She told me that if I didn’t want to be sent an endless tide of photographs of men’s genitals, I should really change my username. Needless to say, I haven’t changed it.”

— Richard Osman

60. “More women are murdering people these days,” says Joyce. “If you ignore the context, it is a real sign of progress.”

— Richard Osman

61. “That twinkle in his eye was undimmed. The twinkle that gave an entirely undeserved suggestion of wisdom and charm. The twinkle that could make you walk down the aisle with a man almost ten years your junior and regret it within months. The twinkle you soon realize is actually the beam of a lighthouse, warning you off the rocks.”

— Richard Osman

62. “It is fine to say ‘what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.’ It is admirable. But it no longer applies when you’re eighty. When you are eighty, whatever doesn’t kill you just ushers you through the next door, and the next door and the next, and all of these doors lock behind you.”

— Richard Osman

63. “Was he a content man, doing the things he liked alone? Or was he a lonely man making the best out of what he had? Alone, or lonely? This question cropped up so often these days, Chris could no longer be confident of his answer. Though if he was a betting man, his money would be on lonely.”

— Richard Osman

64. “I volunteer because it makes me look helpful, and it gives me first dibs on the refreshments.”

— Richard Osman

65. “Donna smiles again. Her eyes have remained shut. This is peaceful, this is helping. Just saying things out loud. Was this therapy? It didn’t feel like it. It just felt like finally telling somebody the truth.”

— Richard Osman

66. “They don’t need anything in return other than her happiness and her friendship. They just like her. It has taken Elizabeth a long time to accept the truth of that.”

— Richard Osman

67. “I would never have therapy, because who wants to unravel all that knitting? Not wroth the risk, thank you. My daughter, Joanna, has a therapist, although you’d be hard-pressed to know why if you saw the size of her house.”

— Richard Osman

68. “So every day Elizabeth opens her diary to a date two weeks ahead and writes herself a question. And every day she answers a question she set herself two weeks ago. This is her early-warning system. This is her team of scientists poring over seismology graphs. If there is going to be an earthquake, Elizabeth will be the first to know about it.”

— Richard Osman

69. “He always found it easy to wake up in the morning; he just found it hard to sleep at night.”

— Richard Osman

70. “Life is about understanding opportunities. Understanding how rarely they come along, and then rising to meet them when they do.”

— Richard Osman

71. “The prophet is often unheralded in his own land.”

— Richard Osman

72. “Patrice has fallen in love before, and this is beginning to show all the signs. That might just be the wine and the Jane Austen, though.”

— Richard Osman

73. “I’d outlive a dog through pure spite,’ says Ron. ‘We’d just sit in opposite corners of the room, staring each other out, and see who went first. Not me. It’s like when we were negotiating with British Leyland in ’seventy-eight. The moment one of their lot went to the loo first, I knew we had ’em.’ Ron knocks back more wine. ‘Never go to the loo first. Tie a knot in it if you have to.”

— Richard Osman

74. “DCI Chris Hudson is addressing the team. He always seems nice enough. He once opened some double doors for her without looking like he wanted a medal for it.”

— Richard Osman

75. “They had got away with it, as some people do, I’m afraid. The older you get, the more you have to come to terms with that.”

— Richard Osman

76. “You got to be careful with money. Don’t let it be in charge.”

— Richard Osman

77. “Thank you so much for reading The Thursday Mystery Club. Unless you haven’t read it yet and have just turned straight to the acknowledgments, which I accept is a possibility. You must live your life as you choose.”

— Richard Osman

78. “The business of dying keeps different hours than the business of living. 45.”

— Richard Osman

79. “Not rollercoasters, not skyscrapers, just the accumulation of small moments that turn acquaintance into friendship.”

— Richard Osman

80. “I think that if I have a special skill, it is that I am often overlooked. Is that the word? Underestimated, perhaps?”

— Richard Osman

81. “Well, in that case you go right ahead. It needs a tidy,’ says Elizabeth. ‘That will be fun for Stephen, a team of goons in the flat at the dead of night. He’s a fine host.”

— Richard Osman

82. “Pearson Street is just what you want a shopping street to be – busy, friendly, local, and happy. Joyce thinks it’s so perfect that it’s surely only six months away from having a Starbucks and losing what it now has.”

— Richard Osman

83. “Very few things are so important you would risk your life for them, but all sorts of things are important enough to risk somebody else’s life.”

— Richard Osman

84. “Good to see you, Elizabeth. Are those flowers for me?” “No, I have taken to carrying flowers around with me as an affectation,” says Elizabeth, handing them over as she is ushered in.”

— Richard Osman

85. “One by one, the lights of the village switch off. The only remaining illumination comes from behind the thick hospital blinds of Willows. The business of dying keeps different hours than the business of living.”

— Richard Osman

86. “Ron, I didn’t really know how to ask for just an instant coffee, so I got us Caramel Frappuccinos.”

— Richard Osman

87. “Ryan Baird behind bars would do no one any great harm.”

— Richard Osman

88. “Don’t get a small dog though, Joyce,’ says Ron. ‘Small dogs are like small men: always got a point to prove. Yapping it up, barking at cars.”

— Richard Osman

89. “Bit by bit, Donna was intent on dragging Chris from his century into hers.”

— Richard Osman

90. “Legal, illegal. It’s a fine line. It’s nineteen eighty-four, and we’re protesting outside Manton Colliery in Nottinghamshire. Fighting to protect the jobs of fifteen hundred men, fighting to save an industry.’ ‘You had coal mines in England?’ says Bogdan. ‘The government, Thatcher, passes emergency legislation, saying you can’t picket outside someone else’s pit. But we do it anyway, we stand our ground.”

— Richard Osman

91. “One of the first things you learn at Coopers Chase is that some people can still actually hear.”

— Richard Osman

92. “More than anything, she is supposed to be a reassuring presence in a terrifying world. Donna understands that, and it also gets her out of both the station and paperwork, so she volunteers.”

— Richard Osman

93. “Don’t get me wrong – I know what an engineer is, and I know what chemicals are, but I can’t join the dots.”

— Richard Osman

94. “Would Ron like a team of officers rooting through his underwear?” “I don’t think anyone would like that,” says Ibrahim. “Least of all the officers.”

— Richard Osman

95. “That’s like lip salve,” says Pauline. “Once you start using it, your lips dry out, and so you have to keep using it.”

— Richard Osman

96. “Bear in mind, also, that this was past ten and I had already said, “Well, this has been lovely,” more than once.”

— Richard Osman

97. “Elizabeth, you think perhaps it’s a sign of my gratitude that I’m standing on the steps of the police station about to help two old ladies shine an infra-red light at a crisp packet?”

— Richard Osman

98. “He had read a headline about Diet Coke once, which was so worrying he had chosen not to read the article.”

— Richard Osman

99. “Jealousy? I don’t think jealousy is the right word, says Pauline. They were both strong women and in those days people liked to make strong women compete with each other, like you couldn’t have two strong women in the same room at the same time. The world would explode.”

— Richard Osman

100. “Elizabeth looks to Donna like the sort of teacher who terrifies you all year but then gives you a grade A and cries when you leave.”

— Richard Osman