The Fourth Bear Quotes
"The little village of Obscurity is remarkable only for its unremarkableness."
"In top-class cucumbering size isn’t everything."
"We call them PDRs, Persons of Dubious Reality."
"Despite its being a career black hole and the butt of many station jokes, she felt somehow that she belonged."
"Only two months ago we successfully detained a ghoulie, a ghostie and a long-legged beastie."
"Here at St. Cerebellum’s we are trying to help the repeatedly violent offender by increasing hospital security to a maximum but reducing individual security to a minimum."
"Liberty, in his case, could never be an option."
"We live in a society that values revenge, revenge for the victims and their families."
"They want the readers to know that they can break heroes just as easily as they can make them."
"Post-traumatic stress, the doctors say—not surprising, being swallowed whole like that."
"The fallout from that hadn’t been comfortable, and Jack had received an official reprimand."
"The hard-won prestige of the Humpty affair and everything else negated in less time than it takes to say 'What big eyes you have.'"
"The NCD isn’t governed by the same rules as conventional police work—if it were, there’d be no need for us."
"Despite the trammeling they had received in the past few weeks, the division’s record through the years had been sound."
"We wait until they beg for our assistance, then save the day."
"In the hazily preordained world of the NCD, it was almost obligatory."
"A cake goes hard when it goes stale, and a cookie goes soft."
"You may want to have rear seat belts fitted and replace the AM push-button radio, but I feel those are small inconveniences when you consider the vast savings this car has to offer."
"The scaremongering that had begun on the radio was thus reinforced, and by nightfall panic buying had occasioned the systematic emptying of every food store and gas station in town."
"There goes the neighborhood," she muttered with barely concealed venom.
"I had a bear as a lodger once; took six months to get the smell of porridge out of the spare room—and the honey in the carpet…"
"Lazy bastard of a husband!" she shouted over her shoulder into the house.
"If I ever hear you swear without asterisk substitution, I’ll arrest you for offensive and threatening language."
"I’m too old for this endless fighting crap," he said mournfully.
"It’s the first piece of crockery I ever threw at you. See, I wrote the date on the back."
"Yes, indeed," replied Madeleine, "the Olympic Ladle-Flinging Team wants to train him up for the 2020 Olympics."
"I love all Madeleine’s work, but no one seems to want to buy photographic books these days."
"The serious pyschotropic effects of marmalade can lead to all kinds of dangerous and aberrant behavior and are generally best avoided as far as bears are concerned."
"The sort of morning that is generally reserved only for breakfast cereal commercials, where members of a nauseatingly bouncy nuclear family leap around like happy gazelles while something resembling wood shavings and latex paint falls in slow motion into a bowl."
"You’re a lying hound. Good luck on the Goldilocks hunt, and invite Mary and Ashley around for dinner one evening."
"No one knew how he’d gotten the submarine into the lake, and he never gave anyone a straight answer when they asked."
"Beautiful, isn’t it? I wouldn’t live anywhere else for all the money there is."
"If you brought them up to regard water the same way as they regard roads, I don’t think you’d have a problem."
"Then call it off. After all, you’re something of an expert when it comes to wriggling out of dates."
"What joy. I hope you wished him all the worst."
"Look upon it as a long-term strategic operation to bring about a quantum change in press relations as regards the continuing effectiveness of the NCD."
"Every image, fact or sound is translated to binary notation and then stored in molecular on/off gates within the liquid interior of our bodies."
"He has a missing sister. If I were his sister, I’d post myself missing, too."
"A car without porous alloy wheels that let the tires go flat overnight? A car whose drag coefficient is better forward than in reverse? A car whose rear window doesn’t pop out when you jack up the back tires?"
"Since each teaspoon of rambosia vitae contains more molecular gates than there are visible stars, the extent of our memory is extraordinarily large."
"Humans rely on a pattern of charged neurons to build up a picture that is revived by association. If the memory is not recalled now and again, it fades—if it is retained at all."
"My evaluation will be based on objective and unbiased observation."
"I am here to report on whether you are mentally fit enough to continue to work as an effective officer of the law."
"It’s all pretty much standard operating procedure within the division."
"I sleep well, eat well, have no problems with anyone except for people who... want to stop me from doing my job."
"You and I have perhaps more in common than you think."
"Equality is not what we want, although it is a start."
"Any creature that wants to be the equal of a human has set its sights way too low."
"If you crap with your ass in the mountain stream, the poo won’t stick to your fur."
"If this facility allows people to really understand what war was about, then we are one step closer to a peaceful planet."
"It’s been a personal dream of the Quangle-Wangle for quite some time now."
"We can’t get away with a simulated bombing run unless we actually drop something."
"No air mortar will arm or fire with one of these within fifteen feet. It means that you can be in the front lines under heavy fire, be showered on by soil, smell the cordite, experience the battle yet be in no real danger."
"‘Unusual’ is more the word I would choose, Inspector."
"Prejudice is a product of ignorance that hides behind barriers of tradition, Inspector."
"It’s merely a continuous and mostly vain attempt to keep several groups of people with opposing needs and agendas happy, and knowing in your heart of hearts that you cannot, and being lambasted for your hard work in the bargain."
"I am what I am—a PDR—and I'm not going to feel ashamed of it."
"Vegetable growers are not generally noted for being violent."
"It's possible, but her bag was destroyed with her."
"I suppose it softens him a bit, don't you think?"
"You'd be surprised by the number of people who die in Obscurity."
"No conspiracy is worth a button unless someone is murdered over it."
"The most remarkable thing about cucumbers is that they have the least caloric value of any vegetable."
"Premier-league cucumbering is a lonely pursuit, Inspector, brightened only by the arrival of another with a similar high level of skill."
"A fine curve can speak volumes—and a smooth, unblemished skin is worth thirty percent of the judge’s marks alone."
"You don’t eat them, Inspector. These are for showing."
"Many cucumberistas have suffered loss and damage at the hands of the Men in Green."
"Bizarre and unseemly experiments of a horticultural nature."
"Cucumber growing is the best fun a man can have."
"A gap in the continuity of care right now could set me back decades."
"I’ve been locked in St. Cerebellum’s for twenty years, and I’m not going back."
"Just ordinary bears trying to lead a life of peaceful solitude."
"It's the same with this. There's antigravitons and bioconducive plastoids in it somewhere, but I'm not too clear on the details."
"Because networks are everywhere. The road and rail systems, the postal services, the Internet, your friendships, family, electricity, water—everything on this planet is composed of networks."
"People don't change just because you know more about them. I'm still the same Jack Spratt that you knew yesterday, and I'll be the same Jack Spratt tomorrow and the day after."
"It wasn't that. There was something else. Something malevolent about the car."
"You're good at this weird NCD shit precisely because you're not real."
"I thought you said Bartholomew murdered her?"
"It's all right for you, said Jack after a pause. At least you've got a long, performance-based traditional backing to your existence."
"The whole situation is a long way from irredeemable."
"I take my punishment with good grace. Thank you, Father."
"There is no place for you in—Hang on," he added, suddenly thinking of something. "You’re a thieving little swine, aren’t you?"
"Sorry," said the ape, wagging a finger at him. "I never steal to order—that would be immoral. I only do it for fun."
"Okay, then—do you want to have some seriously good fun?"
"National interest be damned," replied Jack. "Goldilocks is dead, and the Bruins are fighting for their lives. I tell you, someone’s going to go down for this."
"Because that’s how long it’ll be before Danvers or Briggs starts checking Bartholomew’s phone records and... and... finds out that it was me who tipped him off."
"We’re NCD," said Mary, remembering something that Jack had told her not that long before. "This is what we do. We get suspended, battered, beaten, and almost arrested. But the bottom line is we hunt for the truth and bring justice to the nursery world. No matter what."
"I suggest that these people have a yeti-shaped hole in their lives that needs to be filled in some manner, whether sensible or not."
"Pippa Piper picked Peck over Pickle or Pepper?" exclaimed Mary incredulously. "Which of the Peck pair did Pippa Piper pick?"
"You’re here because they asked for you. Don’t ask me why, but they did—you, too, Mary."
"I have experience with bears," he said. "Do you want me to speak to them?"
"Trust me. What’s the deal over this surrender?"
"Bears are trustworthy and honest, and I have Friend to Bears status. They’d all fight to the death to protect me."
"Every recipient of a Gray-‘guaranteed’ car died in it, you say?"
"There’s only one tried and tested way to stay young, and that’s a pact with the Dark One."
"If it could be done, can you imagine the value of such a discovery? Unlimited safe and cheap power from water."
"I’m head of the NCD, Sergeant. In matters concerning my jurisdiction, I have unlimited access—you know the rules."
"Tell Mary I… would pluck the stars from the sky… 100… her… 10010101… 10… 1."
"It’s not over yet. Mr. Demetrios is the fourth bear, and Briggs isn’t exactly pro-Spratt at present."
"Get on," said Vinnie, "and whatever happens, stay on."