The hanged man of Saint-Pholien, του Georges Simenon

'He smoked with his cigarette stuck to his lower lip, a small detail that spoke volumes about his weariness or indifference.' P. 2

'A poor room, like all the other poor rooms in the world, except, perhaps, that poverty is nowhere more dispiriting than in northern Germany.' P.4

'...he did something that Maigret had often seen when businessmen like him had their aperitifs in bars around the Paris stock exchange, for they had that inimitable way of leaning backwards, throwing out their chests while tucking in their chins and opening with careless satisfaction that sacred obect: the leather portefeuille plump with money.' P. 18

'A light rain began to fall, and whenever the car passed a streetlamp, each drop became a star.' P.55

"Below another sketch were written four lines from Francois Villon's Ballad of the Hanged Men.' P.73

'He'd sensed it, that sob of rage and despair swelling inside the man's throat until his Adam's apple quivered.' P.83

'Maigret was tall and wide, particularly broad-shouldered, solidly built, and his run-of-the-mill clothes emphasized his peasant stockiness. His Features were coarse, and his eyes could seem as still and dull as a cow's. In this he resembled certain figures out of children's nightmares, those monstrously big blank-faced creatures that bear down upon sleepers as if to crush them. There was something implacable and inhuman about him that suggested a pachyderm plodding inexorably towards its goal.' P. 83-84

' "When there's a fire, onlookers can't help wanting it to last, to be a spectacular fire, and when the river is rising, newspaper readers hope for major flooding they can talk about for the next twenty years. They want something interesting, and it doesn't matter what!" ' P.124