Philip Kerr Quotes

“When you get a cat to catch the mice in your kitchen, you can't expect it to ignore the rats in the cellar.”

— Philip Kerr

“A man's bookseller should keep his confidence, like his physician. What can become of a world where every man knows what another man reads? Why, sir, books would become like quacks' potions, with every mountebank in the newspapers claiming one volume's superiority over another.”

— Philip Kerr

“On the whole it's not wise to remind the devil that he's the devil, especially when we were getting on so well.”

— Philip Kerr

“It is always the women who rebuild the civilizations that the men have done their best to destroy”

— Philip Kerr

“Looking round the room I found there were so many false eyelashes flapping at me that I was beginning to feel a draught.”

— Philip Kerr

“Being a Berlin cop in 1942 was a little like putting down mousetraps in a cage full of tigers.”

— Philip Kerr

“She was shot dead, in cold blood, he said bitterly. I could see we were in for a long night. I got out my cigarettes.”

— Philip Kerr

“All men come to resemble their fathers. That isn't a tragedy, but you need a hell of a sense of humour to handle it.”

— Philip Kerr

“One day I hoped some thoughtful historian would point out the close connection between the Mercedes-Benz motor car and Germany's favorite dictator and that the Lord would find a way to pay these bastards back for their help in bringing the Nazis to power and keeping them there.”

— Philip Kerr

Looking at him I felt as if I had just met a powerful gorilla while at the same time being in possession of the world's last banana.

— Philip Kerr

“The man who succeeds is the man who is able to reduce problems to their simplest terms and who has the courage of his convictions - despite the objections of intellectuals. The courage to speak, perhaps, even when he believes that what he is suggesting sounds like madness.”

— Philip Kerr

The real question here is what happens to you, Gunther. In many ways you're a useful fellow to have around. Like a bent coat hanger in a toolbox, you're not something that was ever designed for a specific job, but you do manage to come in useful sometimes.

— Philip Kerr

“If he was a member of the human race at all, Neumann was its least attractive specimen. His eyebrows, twitching and curling like two poisoned caterpillars, were joined together by an irregular scribble of poorly matched hair. Behind thick glasses that were almost opaque with greasy thumbprints, his grey eyes were shifty and nervous, searching the floor as if he expected that at any moment he would be lying flat on it. Cigarette smoke poured out from between teeth that were so badly stained with tobacco they looked like two wooden fences.”

— Philip Kerr

He was as obsequious as a Japanese ivy plant. Wringing his hands as if he hoped to squeeze the milk of human kindness from his fingernails, ...

— Philip Kerr

“It's not easy being the world's policeman. No one thanks you for it.”

— Philip Kerr

All nationalism is based on racism and hate. I'm Scottish; I was born in Scotland, as my parents, as my grandparents.

— Philip Kerr

“I love sitting at my desk and facing a quiet day with a pen in my hand, and putting myself into a story. It's kind of weird, isn't it? I mean, to absent myself from real life and make up stories is strange, but I started doing this when I was ten years old. It was all I wanted to do.”

— Philip Kerr

“After a while, you get tired of being the official Scot and defending everything Scottish.”

— Philip Kerr

“As a writer, you rely on whatever makes you up as a person, whether those things are twisted and nasty or otherwise.”

— Philip Kerr

“I really wanted to write the way Kubrick makes films - 'Strangelove,' '2001', 'Clockwork Orange', 'Barry Lyndon' - they're all so different.”

— Philip Kerr

“I think John le Carre is, at 77, the greatest living writer alive. He is a master craftsman.”

— Philip Kerr

I think the context of an hour-long drama gives breathing space that you don't get in a film.

— Philip Kerr

“Sport seems to be much more important to people than politics.”

— Philip Kerr

The mark of a writer is to make a story as likely as possible, and I've done my best to deliver authentic atmosphere.

— Philip Kerr

The most interesting legal philosophy is German, so naturally I went to Germany, particularly to Berlin, quite a bit.

— Philip Kerr

“There is always a temptation to take things for granted, to get lazy, and to presume that the reader knows more than they do.”

— Philip Kerr

“I don't think any of us know how we would react until we were put in a situation where we have to do something bad or do something good. I think I'd like to believe I'd act like a decent human being, but I'm realistic to know I don't know.”

— Philip Kerr

I prefer to write books for children instead of reading them. But I do strongly believe in childhood and in respecting childhood innocence. I don't like books for children that deal with adult themes.

— Philip Kerr

“I was a member of Corstorphine Library in Edinburgh, and every Friday night, my parents took me there to borrow books. I also used to spend nearly all my pocket money on books.”

— Philip Kerr

“I will say that anyone who supports Scottish independence should go to Athens. Because nothing works. It is a disaster. It is a ruined, dirty place where people do not have money or future prospects. The day one after independence, Scotland would be worse.”

— Philip Kerr

“I write by hand and then transfer the text onto the computer. I like the process of actually having a pen in my hand. Things flow more easily for me that way.”

— Philip Kerr

“If I weren't a writer, I think I might have thrown myself more enthusiastically into advertising. But, it's difficult to imagine being a diligent copywriter. It would be quite exasperating for me.”

— Philip Kerr

James Bond was an early favourite, although I didn't understand much of it. I read the Bible a lot, too. You might say that this was my favourite, since I seemed to read it so often.

— Philip Kerr

“My parents had never been to Germany. But I knew what I didn't want to write about, and I didn't want to write about Edinburgh. A lot of writers find Edinburgh fascinating, but I never did. As a matter of fact, I couldn't wait to get away from it.”

— Philip Kerr

“Publishers just want you to write the same book over and over again. But why would I want to do that? It would be like putting on a threadbare dressing-gown day after day.”

— Philip Kerr

“Religion was quite a thing in our house - we were Baptists. Some Sundays I went to church three times. If there was a talk on missionary work in the afternoon, I could be there all bloody day. But religion took its first big knock after Dad died.”

— Philip Kerr

“Sport crosses party lines and ethnic lines. It occupies a greater realm, and it's all the more disappointing when sports figures turn out to be like everyone else.”

— Philip Kerr

The fascination for me writing about crime in Berlin was the idea that there was this much bigger crime taking place in the background, a fantastically epochal moment in history which is just going on. That just sort of makes the whole thing have a greater resonance.

— Philip Kerr

There's something weird about the Scots. We are a troubled, slightly tortured race - the sense of the respectable outward character and, inside, the turmoil of something darker.

— Philip Kerr

“I'll be honest," I said. "I don't like it one little bit. But I'm delighted to see it exhibited without any interference from people who know as little about art as I do. Looking at it is like looking inside the head of someone who disagrees with you about nearly everything. It makes me feel uncomfortable." I shook my head sadly and sighed, "That's democracy, I guess." Another”

— Philip Kerr

“If there's one thing history has taught me to believe it is that it's dangerous to believe in anything very much.”

— Philip Kerr

At least that was what she had told me. You never know with women. What they tell you and what they don't tell you is a very long bridge across a very wide river with all kinds of fish.

— Philip Kerr

Hmm. That's what I suspected, you mad bastard.

— Philip Kerr

“Believe me, I know a lot about harm's way. It turns sharp left off the road to Shitsville when you're least expecting it.”

— Philip Kerr

Socrates learned to his cost, the true nature of democracy is to encourage corruption and excess in all its forms. But the

— Philip Kerr

“His name was Kurt Waldheim.”

— Philip Kerr

“Winter came early that year. Snow filled the gray December air like fragments of torn-up hope”

— Philip Kerr

“You talk like the Nazis were going to win the election, Bernie."
"I keep hoping they won't. And I keep worrying that they might. But I've got seven loaves and five fishes telling me the republic needs more than just a lucky break this time. If I wasn't a cop, I might believe in miracles. But I am and I don't. In this job you meet the lazy, the stupid, the cruel, and the indifferent. Unfortunately, that's what's called an electorate.”

— Philip Kerr

Farraj looked at me with the clinical distaste of a chiropodist regarding a septic toenail.

— Philip Kerr

That smelled strongly of misery, which, as anyone will tell you, is a subtle mixture of hope, despair, rancid cooking fat, and men's piss.

— Philip Kerr