As Chimney Sweepers Come To Dust Quotes
"There is no sadder word in the English language. The very sound of it—like echoing iron gates crashing closed behind you; like steel bolts being shot shut—makes your hair stand on end, doesn’t it?"
"Only the faithful family retainers, Dogger and Mrs. Mullet, would have shed a furtive tear at my departure, but even so, they, too, in time, would have only foggy memories of Flavia."
"It was like riding bareback on an enormous steel angel doing the breaststroke."
"When all else failed, a good old cry was guaranteed to get them off the hook."
"We’re not allowed in others’ rooms after lights-out. I’ll be blacked."
"One of the things I dread about becoming an adult is that sooner or later you begin letting sentimentality get in the way of simple logic."
"Life wasn’t fair. It simply wasn’t fair, and I meant to make a note of it."
"Even a barbarian will think twice before meddling with that."
"All that ever escapes a convent is the prayers and the smoke."
"The first syllable rhymes with ‘brave’ and ‘grave.’"
"Three-in-one again: a holy trinity of truth, righteousness, and quick thinking."
"My girls! She already thought of me as one of her girls."
"Cigarette? No, thank you. I’m trying to give them up."
"You are a very peculiar person, Flavia de Luce."
"Excuses are not legal tender at Miss Bodycote’s Female Academy."
"Rules are rules. They are meant to be obeyed."
"School was not turning out to be at all what I thought it would be."
"There had been no happier hours of my life than those spent alone in my chemical laboratory at Buckshaw, bundled against the cold in the ancient gray cardigan of Father’s I had rescued from the salvage bin, rummaging through the dusty notebooks in Uncle Tar’s library, teaching myself, little by little, atom by atom, the mysteries of organic chemistry."
"The doors of Creation had been flung open to me, and I had been allowed to walk among its mysteries as if I were strolling in a summer garden. The universe had rolled over and let me rub its tummy."
"Tickling and learning were much the same thing. When you tickle yourself—ecstasy; but when anyone else tickles you—agony."
"You can’t allow them to go on bullying you. It’s not right."
"I, Flavia Sabina de Luce, was a force to be reckoned with."
"Nature does abhor a vacuum, but she equally abhors pressure."
"I’m made extremely uneasy by excessive noise, and that I do not care for shouted instructions. If I’d been meant to be a sheep, I reasoned, I’d have been born with wool instead of skin."
"Life among the dead. This was where I was meant to be!"
"You stood firm. You proved that you are indeed the person I believed you to be. You are, indeed, your mother’s daughter."
"How did we appear to a bird? Two small, insignificant figures standing in a field of stones, I expect, and nothing more."
"It is because I wanted to be alone with you."
"Without Cornelia Corwin there would have been no successful evacuation of Dunkirk. Three hundred thousand men would have perished in vain."
"The day girls are a front, you mean," I said.
"You will discover that certain skills become even more essential in peacetime."
"Your work with Mrs. Bannerman must, necessarily, take place in the small hours."
"It’s a strange world when you come right down to it."
"You must learn not to ask unnecessary questions," Miss Fawlthorne went on, as if she were reading my mind.
"Water is life. Remember that, girls, and remember it well."
"I judged that we had pulled away from Miss Bodycote’s about fifty minutes ago, and had therefore traveled, at a speed of forty miles per hour, approximately thirty-three miles."
"I provide assistance to the police from time to time as a way of keeping my hand in."
"Questions," she rasped into my ear. "She asked too many questions."
"There are times when eyebrows speak louder than words."
"Even recognizing irony... was a major accomplishment, and I was quite proud to have possibly done so."
"It was not easy trying to cut Jumbo from the herd (I'm quite proud of that little jest)."
"One of the many happy things about physics is that it works anywhere in the world."
"But if God hadn’t wanted me to be the way I am, He would have arranged to have me born a haddock instead of Flavia de Luce—wouldn’t He?"
"Anyone who could apologize while puking still possessed a brain able to function at the highest levels of decency."
"The sound of cheering girls in the distance indicated that the day’s hockey matches had come to a close. If I were to get back to my room unnoticed, I’d better be on my way."
"Desperate positions require desperate measures."
"Ordinary angels... had fluffy swans-down wings that sprouted from the shoulders: capable enough for domestic flight but nowhere near as powerful as the eagle wings of their superiors, the archangels."
"One seldom thinks of that vast Dominion without thinking of Crippen, the notorious poisoner and homeopathic doctor, who made his home there briefly."
"My time in these dwindling days is much devoted to sowing sweet peas and dividing rhubarb crowns: the bitter and the sweet, so to speak. The garden in autumn, although somewhat somber, is full of hope for the year to come."
"We remember you often, and trust you do the same of us."
"I didn’t realize how much her words affected me until a tear plopped onto the page and made the indelible pencil run purple."
"A sudden and unexpectedly cool wind caught several dead leaves and made them scuttle across the walkway with the chill grating sound of old bones stirring in their moldy coffins in some forgotten underworld."
"It was at that moment that I began to question my faith."
"There’s nothing like friction to bring on rosy cheeks at short notice."
"Once people have you in their power, it’s remarkable how quickly their grip extends to all things."
"Throughout history the cold blue de Luce eye has stopped many an overstep and many a runaway horse."
"I stood motionless on the same spot, listening. But there was not a sound."
"There is a mystery in silence that can never be matched by mere words. Silence is power—at least until they grab you by the neck."
"This was not a thought that came out of nowhere. I suppose it had been simmering away in a covered pot in some subterranean kitchen of my brain for quite some time."
"In this topsy-turvy world, anything seemed possible."
"It was the only way in which those of us who were chosen for a life of service could keep our secret doings from the others."
"I needed to rededicate myself: to follow my brain instead of my tear ducts, and to stick to cold logic, no matter what."
"Quite frankly, I was sick and tired of being held hostage by my emotions."
"It was all part of a Grand Game, in which we were merely players."
"Fear, Dogger had once told me, is often irrational, but is nevertheless real because it is generated by the reptile part of our primitive brain: the instinctive part that is designed for dodging dinosaurs."
"There are times when truth is the simplest and the most effective weapon, and this was one of them. It’s risky, but it sometimes works."
"‘Remember, Friend, as you pass by, As you are now, so once was I. As I am now, so you must be, So Friend, prepare to follow me.’ It was almost my favorite piece of poetry."
"Science does not believe in ghosts," she said. "And nor, as a budding chemist, should you."
"I realized I was not only on my own, but likely to remain so."
"Michaelmas daisies mean ‘Farewell,’ and the chrysanthemums ‘Cheerfulness in Spite of Misfortune.’ You must have put a lot of thought into choosing them."
"You’ve had a great deal of bereavement," I said. "Your mother, Mr. Merton—and the first Mrs. Rainsmith."
"It must have been an awful shock to you when Mrs. Rainsmith drowned," I said.
"Yes and no," I said. "She had been missing for ten years and her body was found in the mountain ice."
"Gastric trouble," Elvina said. "Very bad. But she was a trouper. Never let it get in the way of her obligations."
"You have no idea," Elvina said. "Most people don’t appreciate the cook’s position. Gastric trouble is cook trouble. There’s always someone willing to point the finger."
"I know what you mean when you say she was a trouper," I said.
"Frankly, Mr. Merton," I said. "Just between you and me and the gatepost—it’s a bugger."
"It is that hushed moment just before the final curtain when all the world seems to hold its breath: the moment when nothing more than a tiny, flickering, and nearly invisible flame will either send the accused to the gallows or set him free."
"I hadn’t the heart to expose her. If I revealed the fact that Fabian was Clarissa Brazenose, then, even though I had won, she had lost."
"Consequently," she said, dragging it out the way people do when they want to deliver an invisible blow, "… we are sending you home."
"They’d think I killed him. I needed someone who could prove I didn’t. That’s why I wrote to you."
"Can we talk in your room? Fascinating as it might be, discussing the details of its own murder within earshot of a corpse seemed to me not in the best of taste."
"I threatened to kill him," Plaxton blurted. "Good lord!" I said. "Did anyone hear you?"
"Because it’s evidence," Plaxton said. "And no matter what you may think, I am not a killer."
"I live on petrol fumes and swill motor oil for breakfast."
"Somerville and his cronies could howl all they wanted at the door: There wasn’t a schoolboy on the planet—or a man, for that matter—who would dare disturb a female locked into a WC."
"I’ve always been amazed by the ease with which a stranger’s life can be reconstructed by simply snooping through their belongings."
"The British schoolboy may be many things, but he is not a beast. In spite of his outward shell of highly polished indifference, he is at heart a gentleman and a jellyfish."
"How easy it is, on the whole, to pull the wool over the eyes of men and boys."
"It simply boggles the mind the way in which some people can turn on a sixpence."