No Hero Quotes

“Ow,” I say. “Oh balls, ow.” Not quite up there with Shelley or Yeats, I’ll admit, but honesty is a virtue, as my mum always taught me.”
― Jonathan Wood, No Hero

“Better?” I cannot quite keep the incredulity out of my voice. “Yeah.” Clyde nods. “The wires stop it from stinging too bad.” “Really?” “Oh.” Clyde looks apologetic. “What?” I say. “Well...” Clyde shuffles on the spot. “Now it’s your turn.”
― Jonathan Wood, No Hero

“I almost miss it, caught up in the madness of the moment. But then I realize and slap the two clamps down onto the battery. And, even as I do it, part of me, yet again, wants to be put on lithium and told the bad dreams will go away.”
― Jonathan Wood, No Hero

“Clyde retreats into his shoulders. “Turns out we’re both a bit late on the scene, old chap,” he says. “The old guard’s gone. All the people who’ve seen what we’ve seen. They’re retired. Reassigned. No one in government comes to read the book. They don’t see the Progeny. They don’t really know. So we just rattle around in the old space. Alone and forlorn. Except, well, not forlorn, because, well, despite it all, I quite like my job.”
― Jonathan Wood, No Hero

“Clyde must see my befuddlement because I don’t think anyone else learns much when he says, “Thaumaturgy— big fancy word for magic.”
― Jonathan Wood, No Hero

“They all look as astonished as I do. Which, while it confirms that I’m not suffering from auditory hallucinations, is not quite as reassuring as I’d hoped.”
― Jonathan Wood, No Hero

“A complete and utter shambles. A disaster. It stretches the limits of comprehension that such a thorough display of incompetence could have been managed without willful bloody intent. Such a f—” Shaw trips over the curse word, swallows it back down. “Such a damned disaster.” She is white-lipped, wide-eyed. Every muscle in her face seems tensed. Two red spots stand out on her cheeks like a clown’s make-up. To my right, Clyde and Tabitha shuffle their feet. To my left, Kayla stares intently at one corner of the room, as rigid as the moment the monster hit her.”
― Jonathan Wood, No Hero

“There’s something where the student was. Something massive. Something growing. It’s human in shape, I’ll give it that. Squat powerful legs, broad as my chest, thickening at the thigh, ropes of muscle bursting through the jeans he was wearing. Above the waist—an inverted pyramid of flesh, each abdominal muscle a chopping board of flesh, the pectorals as wide as the hood of the car Kayla just cut away, but thicker, vault door thick. And the arms... They grow longer, knuckles strike the ground. Forearms thicker than the thighs. Biceps thicker still. Shoulder muscles like a cow’s carcass dragged over the joint. He’s colossal, ten feet tall and still going. Twelve foot now.”
― Jonathan Wood, No Hero

“And transmogrification. Of all things.” “Oh bugger,” Clyde groans. Then he breaks into a run. “Trans what?” I say. “Why are we running?” “Battery!” Clyde is yelling. “He’s got a car battery!” “Move it!” Tabitha’s yell is an electronic screech in my ear. Transmogrifi-what?”
― Jonathan Wood, No Hero

“Any cynicism I possessed has rather had its legs cut out from under it these past few days, but the idea of focusing magical power is beginning to seem a little too New Age mysticism to be real to me.”
― Jonathan Wood, No Hero

“And thereby we arrive at the appropriate point for me to say that it’s very nice to meet them all and that I have a couple of questions if they don’t mind too much, and generally do all the things that ten plus years on the force has prepared me to do. What I actually do, of course, is my goldfish impression. Open mouth. Close mouth. Open again. No sound.”
― Jonathan Wood, No Hero

“This way,” Clyde says with more gusto than I think I could manage even on a good day and suddenly we’re whisking our way down a myriad of corridors, pushing through doors and security points. I tag along as best I can, feeling like flotsam caught in a wake. Eventually we reach a moment of stasis, waiting for an elevator to take us up. “So,” I manage to say into the toe-tapping silence, “who are the Sheilas then?” Clyde turns, a look of sudden horror on his face. For a moment I wonder if he’s foreign and I’ve somehow stumbled across a colloquialism that means I’ve slept with his mother.”
― Jonathan Wood, No Hero

“Ow,” I say. “Oh balls, ow.” Not quite up there with Shelley or Yeats, I’ll admit, but honesty is a virtue, as my mum always taught me.”
― Jonathan Wood, No Hero

“I wipe sweat from my palms and smile around the room. I try to make it seem like I’m jolly and at ease. Not sure how well that goes. Shaw takes a seat opposite me and consults her watch again. “We’re behind,” she says. There’s a quick glance at Kayla and me. The offenders, I guess. I try to look contrite, but I don’t think Kayla bothers.”
― Jonathan Wood, No Hero

“And Kayla is terrifying. Utterly. And she kills. Has killed. And the way she moves... How can she really be human? How can she not be... something else? It’s all too much and too big and too frightening.”
― Jonathan Wood, No Hero

“Yes.” Shaw keeps her measured tone. “Two interrelated answers. I am going to tell them to you. For the first one, I need you to think of a radio.” “I can do that.” I go with my car radio. “So,” says Shaw, “a radio. FM and AM. Both radio waves, both ways of transmitting sound. But imagine the dial is stuck on AM. The FM stations are still there, but you can’t get to them. In fact, if no one told you about FM you’d have no way of knowing they were there. For all intents and purposes, they wouldn’t exist for you.”
― Jonathan Wood, No Hero

“Are you familiar with the Fermi paradox, Detective?” A distant bell rings but I can’t place it, and shake my head. “At its most basic,” Shaw says, “the paradox points out that the absence of alien life in the universe is unusual. The universe is big. Big enough that life should have evolved elsewhere, but not so big that we shouldn’t have found any examples. But we’ve found nothing. There’s nothing there.”
― Jonathan Wood, No Hero

“I’m sorry,” I say. “I just don’t know...” Felicity Shaw nods, which is a better reception than I’d anticipated. “Your cynicism stands you well,” she says. She looks away from me, out of the window. “Still, I’m surprised to find you with such a mindset after all you’ve seen.”
― Jonathan Wood, No Hero

“Felicity Shaw,” she says and sticks out a hand. Her suit is paler today but no less severe. “You look like you’re feeling a little bit better, Detective.” “Thank you,” I say. “Fresh air and exercise. Drugs and doctors. All that.” She doesn’t smile. I think Swann would have smiled at that. Which I hope makes me funny and not Swann a woman with a terrible sense of humor. Could go either way on that one, though.”
― Jonathan Wood, No Hero

“I blink, rub my eyes. Memories—a nice place to visit but not necessarily somewhere you’d like to live.”
― Jonathan Wood, No Hero

“Wait... we... you... you mean... we...” I spray words around the room, taking out innocent bystanders with my abrupt enthusiasm. “This is huge! This is enormous! This is like the Godzilla of breaks. It’s the sort of break that destroys large chunks of Tokyo!” I stop, take stock, try and gain perspective. Punctured lung and all that. “Who is it?” I ask, unable to stop one toe from tapping.”
― Jonathan Wood, No Hero

“How long until I’m up and about, Doctor?” She cocks her head on one side. “I have no idea. I’m not your doctor, Detective.” There’s a very thin smile on her face. And then she’s gone, and I think that’s pretty weird right there. But then I sink into sleep and morphine demonstrates that when it comes to weird, it has my visitor rather outclassed.”
― Jonathan Wood, No Hero

“She is very close to having a pretty face. But there’s a hardness to her that seems reluctant to lapse and let her cross the boundary into simple prettiness. She has a structured look, everything ordered. Her hair is carefully clipped into place. Her suit is straight edges and diagonal lines. Fashionable without being flashy, but without looking comfortable either. She seems a rather severe woman. The sort who’d play a nun in a movie and hit your knuckles with a ruler.”
― Jonathan Wood, No Hero