The Mysterious Mr. Quin Quotes
"Jealousy–it drives one to the Devil–it is the Devil! It can drive one to black murder. Be careful, Richard, for God’s sake, be careful!"
"The longer the time that has elapsed, the more things fall into proportion. One sees them in their true relationship to one another."
"I believe in the value of impressions. In any time of crisis, there is always one moment that stands out from all the others, one picture that remains when all else has faded."
"I wish–I very much wish that something could be done about it."
"We are doing what we can. There is still nearly half an hour before your car can be ready."
"We have studied the effect. Let us now pass to the cause."
"A clean quick end is better than a lingering one–causing trouble and expense and bother to all."
"Life is a compound of physical and mental experiences."
"I always want to know what is going to happen tomorrow."
"Life is very strange. I cannot imagine what it must be like to be that–always a looker-on."
"Sometimes, I think, there have been tragic things. Is that so?"
"Can you imagine a greater tragedy than that? For a young wife, only a year married, to stand helpless while the man she loved fought for his life–and lost it–horribly."
"There is something more terrible. And that is for a young wife to stand there and hope and long for her husband to drown..."
"All the time I hoped–hoped–and my hope came true."
"I was terribly happy when I knew he was really dead and couldn't come back to torture me any more."
"Those things should happen to one when one is older–when one is more prepared for–for beastliness."
"I wish I’d remembered to ask my English boy his Christian name. I would have called the baby after him."
"Loving him has made me into a woman. I love him as a woman loves a man."
"The whole edifice may crumple. You as you, may not matter to anyone in the world, but you as a person in a particular place may matter unimaginably."
"But he will not suspect the truth. It is the best way."
"If the desire is strong enough–a messenger may be found."
"Nobody can alter or influence the use you mean to make of it."
"He was so temperamental. He came rushing home at once, which was quite the wrong thing to do, and not at all what the lawyers meant."
"I have an idea that you have been playing Providence once more, to judge by your expression."
"I never get on with that sort of person. You know–earnest men with beards and usually spectacles."
"If you can't afford a Rolls Royce you have got to go in charabancs," said Bristow fiercely.
"I am beginning to get the jimjams, Satterthwaite. I thought for a moment there was someone sitting in that empty chair and that he said something to me."
"Tradition and atmosphere are intangible things. They take centuries to build up and if you destroyed them you couldn’t rebuild them again in twenty-four hours."
"Sometimes one sees things more clearly years afterwards than one could possibly at the time."
"It is a question of proportion, isn’t it? And more than proportion probably. Relativity and all that sort of thing."
"But I agree there is no getting away from the facts."
"She wasn’t quite real, you know. Shadowy. Like one of the people who come out of hills in Gaelic fairy tales."
"One has to guess if one is going to get anywhere."
"The house was shut up immediately after the tragedy and everything was left exactly as it was."
"It would have been better taste if he had waited until they had gone."
"It must be odd, you know. You might stand outside on the terrace looking in at the window at your own dead body, and you would see everything."
"I think she had in her the makings of a very accomplished actress."
"It is so wonderful to be alive again after being so long dead."
"You mean last year–at the theatre. You know, you do fiddle with things, Rosy."
"I see a lad that loves me–and I see a lad that leaves me, And a third lad, a Shadow Lad–and he’s the lad that grieves me."
"Shiela, dark Shiela, what is it that you’re seeing?"
"Because of it, so he verily believed, he had come again and again to the house."
"We bought that screen with more than money–with love."
"For ten years I have lived with the man I love. Now I am going to the man who for ten years has loved me."
"The house of their dreams–or a rubbish heap–who shall say?"