Short Book Quotes

Without pride, man becomes a parasite – and there are already too many parasites.

~ Carla H. Krueger

Shame comes in different doses.

~ Carla H. Krueger

It’s late and most of the clerks are at home in their beds, dreaming of swimming in pools filled with real money.

~ Carla H. Krueger

Don’t mock my suggestions, Ridley – one day in the near future, they might just save your life.” Maxwell D. Kalist.

~ Carla H. Krueger

Men circle like bees around honey, buzzing to communicate their sexual despair.

~ Carla H. Krueger

Only men with intelligence, confidence and absolutely no empathy at all can progress upstairs.

~ Carla H. Krueger

Every time I so much as blink you get an erection.

~ Carla H. Krueger

To Kalist, Baumauer’s just a timber bridge in need of a good hot fire.

~ Carla H. Krueger

He’s in a side room alone with her and it’s far too fucking hot.

~ Carla H. Krueger

You are a more powerful person than you might have ever imagined.” Maxwell D. Kalist.

~ Carla H. Krueger

Are there not times, Ridley, when you yourself wish only to hear the best in people – and not to be dragged downwards into the underworld we all regularly inhabit?

~ Carla H. Krueger

I’m warning you because you’re young and vulnerable. He’s a dirty, lying, conniving piece of shit and he’s dangerous.” Gottfried Baumauer.

~ Carla H. Krueger

Maxwell D. Kalist is a receiving teller at a city bank, Orwell and Finch, where he runs an efficient department of twenty two clerks and twelve junior clerks. He carries a leather-bound vade mecum everywhere with him – a handbook of the most widely contravened banking rules. He works humourlessly (on the surface of it) in a private, perfectly square office on the third floor of a restored grain exchange midway along the Eastern flank of Květniv’s busy, modern central plaza. Behind his oblong slate desk and black leather swivel chair is an intimidating, three-storey wall made almost entirely of bevelled, glare-reducing grey glass in art-deco style; one hundred and thirty six rectangles of gleam stacked together in a dangerously heavy collage.

~ Carla H. Krueger

Each day of the week, Kalist indulges himself in a different, secret ritual. On Mondays, he wears cologne. On Tuesdays, he eats meat for lunch. On Wednesdays, he places a bet after work. On Thursdays, he smokes one cigarette (but claims he’s not a smoker). On Fridays, he treats himself to his favourite pastime: horse practice – he grew up with horses and likes to try and emulate their distinctive whinnies, snorts, neighs, snuffles, sighs, grunts, fluttering nostrils, the occasional aggressive outburst and the especially beautiful nicker of a mare to her foal. And, on Saturdays, lest we forget, Maxwell D. Kalist drinks wine from a chalice.

~ Carla H. Krueger

Secrets are dangerous.” Gottfried Baumauer.

~ Carla H. Krueger