You could find beauty nearly anywhere if you stopped to look for it, but the battle to get through the days made it easy to forget that this totally … - Robert Galbraith

You could find beauty nearly anywhere if you stopped to look for it,

But they had already tried, again and again and again, and always, when the first crashing wave of mutual longing subsided, the ugly wreck of the past lay revealed again, its shadow lying darkly over everything they tried to rebuild.

He possessed a finely honed sense for the strange and the wicked. He had seen things all through his childhood that other people preferred to imagine happened only in films.

"But people who fundamentally change are rare, in my experience, because it's bloody hard work compared to going on a march or waving a flag. Have we met a single person on this case who's radically different to the person they were forty years ago?"

"I don't know . . . I think I've changed," said Robin, then felt embarrassed to have said it out loud.

Strike looked at her without smiling for the space it took him to chew and swallow a chip, then said,

"Yeah. But you're exceptional, aren't you?"