Foxglove Summer Quotes
"Anyone can do magic, just like anyone can play the violin. All it takes is patience, hard graft and somebody to teach you."
"Knowing your limits is not an aspiration in magic – it’s a survival strategy."
"In the absence of coffee, I had a shower, and, by the time I was dressed, Dominic had texted me to say that he was on his way."
"Potentia silvestris, Polidori called the power derived from a forest, the power from whence sprang the antlered gods of Celtic myth."
"You’ve got to be careful when applying concepts like speciation to human beings, or before you know what’s happening you end up with forced sterilisations, Belsen and the Middle Passage."
"Missing kids are tough cases. I mean, murder is bad but at least the worst has already happened to the victim – they’re not going to get any deader."
"Flora, your actual growing things, retain vestigia really badly and this makes the countryside, leaving aside poetry, not a very magical place."
"For a moment I thought I smelt a sweet slightly fermented scent and the moonlight tricked me into thinking that the empty field behind Dominic’s mum’s garden was filled with trees."
"Judging from the chasing on the mechanism they were Nightingale’s two Purdey guns that he kept in a locked case in the billiard room."
"I say, good shot there, Thomas! Winged the blighter, by god."
"‘Normally we wouldn’t bring something like this to your attention, but unfortunately the media got hold of it...'"
"‘We found a child’s knapsack just off the B4362, four hundred yards from the assembly point.'"
"‘I don’t even know what I’m supposed to be looking for,’ I said."
"‘It’s always tempting to fall back on that strangled mixture of cop-speak and management-ese...'"
"We believe it would be remiss of us not to consider all possible angles. And, since you’re here and available, we’d like you to do a Falcon assessment on the whole case."
"I know hyperthaumaturgical degradation when I see it."
"‘It’s a National Trust property,’ I said. ‘It’s not like there were going to be giant spiders.'"
"If you were an eleven-year-old girl, what would you turn your phone on for?"
"‘We used to get heads,’ said Corve. ‘The druids used to throw them in along with the other offerings.’"
"I may be a city boy, but I’m fairly certain that the greasy purple and red squishy bits are supposed to stay inside the sheep and not be sprayed across a surprisingly large area."
"The terrible Teme trio told me about it. The spirit of the river was done in by Methodists in Victorian times. That really pissed them off."
"I felt her mother practically start out of her chair, and then subside again."
"They made us take them to the film twice. They were looking forward to the next one."
"I see now – apologies. What was the question?"
"‘I mean it,’ she said. ‘And stay that side.’"
"You see us now? Close enough to whisper, close enough for me to smell the magic clinging to your skin, close enough that – if you had the bottle – you could kiss me?"
"‘They’re not short of trees round here,’ she said. ‘They’re not going to miss it. And in case you’re worried, nobody’s living in it or mystically attached to it.’"
"I carry a notebook with a list of these kinds of questions, and it gets longer every month – especially since Nightingale made answering them conditional on my advancement through the forms and wisdoms."
"I didn’t need to inquire into their lives since there was already twenty-plus pages worth of information on him and his family, because Gaby claimed to be BFFs with Nicole Lacey."
"By midday, wives, parents, husbands and partners had started driving up from homes in Leominster, Hereford, Ludlow and Kidderminster."
"Many of them brought food, and the trestle tables were taken out of the community hall and into the field at the back so that everyone could share."
"At some point someone decided it would be a good idea to build a bonfire – and if you’re going to do that you might as well have a barbecue."
"‘This is strangely familiar,’ I said, because you could have dropped my mum smack in the middle and she would have felt right at home."
"‘God, you’re beautiful,’ she said, and gave me a boozy kiss – on the lips thankfully, with no tongue."
"‘We need to get you properly drunk,’ she said."
"‘My milkshake brings all the gods to the yard,’ I said."
"‘Damn right, it’s better than yours,’ said Beverley. ‘I could teach you but I’d have to charge.’"
"‘Trust me,’ she whispered, and drew me down into the water."
"‘You see this lovely river here? Got lots of potential but no one to look after it – to care about it,’ she said."
"‘Trust me,’ said Beverley. ‘The earth moved – that’s all you need to know.’"
"What went right? We got greedy, we thought the war was all but over and started thinking about after, what would be our role, what would be the Folly’s, the order’s, England’s, the Empire’s."
"You see, the Nazis took his work and... I’m not sure what the word is."
"‘No,’ said Hugh. ‘We thought they might have closed the gap, but the methods they used...’"
"‘There were some bright young sparks before the war,’ said Hugh. ‘On both sides. People like David Mellenby, who said they thought it might be possible to formulate a theory that would unite magic with relativity.’"
"‘What if somebody thought that somebody was not the person you thought they were?’ she asked."
"We are the police and we have brought order out of chaos – believe it, bruv!"
"I’m negotiating," she shouted over a background of hurdy-gurdy and screaming children."
"Do you want to make me happy, Lesley?" I said. "Meet me somewhere – so at least I know you’re safe."
"You’ve got about a year, Peter," said Lesley. "Then it’s going to kick off for certain."
"It’s not a decision you want to rush into," I said.
"You can’t stop me getting Nicole back," she said.
"So it was a hostage swap – which meant if we were clever we might be able to get Nicole back and keep not-Nicole as well."
"Blood isn't everything – I want my daughter back."
"I offer myself in exchange for the children, the mother, and my friend. Take me – let everyone else go."
"I’ve loaded this particular gun with scrap iron. Now, I don’t know if a shot to the head will kill you or not. But just consider how much fun we can have finding out."