Josephine Tey > Quotes

“If you think about the unthinkable long enough it becomes quite reasonable.”
― Josephine Tey

“The trouble with you, dear, is that you think an angel of the Lord as a creature with wings, whereas he is probably a scruffy little man with a bowler hat.”
― Josephine Tey, The Franchise Affair

“It's an odd thing but when you tell someone the true facts of a mythical tale they are indignant not with the teller but with you. They don't want to have their ideas upset. It rouses some vague uneasiness in them, I think, and they resent it. So they reject it and refuse to think about it. If they were merely indifferent it would be natural and understandable. But it is much stronger than that, much more positive. They are annoyed.

Very odd, isn't it.”
― Josephine Tey, The Daughter of Time

“Alan Grant: "There are... far too many words written. Millions and millions of them pouring from the presses every minute. It's a horrible thought."

The Midget (his nurse): "You sound constipated.”
― Josephine Tey, The Daughter of Time

“She'll never ride," Eleanor said. She can't even bump the saddle yet."

"Perhaps loony people can't ride," Ruth suggested.

"Ruth," Bee said, with vigour. "The pupils at the Manor are not lunatic. They are not even mentally deficient. They are just 'difficult.'"

"Ill-adjusted is the technical description," Simon said.

"Well, they behave like lunatics. If you behave like a lunatic how is anyone to tell that you're not one?”
― Josephine Tey, Brat Farrar

“The truth of anything at all doesn't lie in someone's account of it. It lies in all the small facts of the time. An advertisement in a paper, the sale of a house, the price of a ring.”
― Josephine Tey, The Daughter of Time

“He knew by heart every last minute crack on its surface. He had made maps of the ceiling and gone exploring on them; rivers, islands, and continents. He had made guessing games of it and discovered hidden objects; faces, birds, and fishes. He made mathematical calculations of it and rediscovered his childhood; theorems, angles, and triangles. There was practically nothing else he could do but look at it. He hated the sight of it.”
― Josephine Tey, The Daughter of Time

“Ruth puts in all the tiddley bits and the expression and doesn’t mind how many wrong notes she strikes, but with Jane it is accuracy or nothing. I don’t know which Chopin would have hated more,” Eleanor said, folding bread and butter into a thickness that would match her appetite.”
― Josephine Tey, Brat Farrar