What Time the Sexton's Spade Doth Rust (Flavia de Luce, #11)

by Alan Bradley

I thanked her for her concern but didn’t tell her that I wasn’t being eaten by loneliness. It was lack of love, and that’s no sin either.

The instant you become a woman, you become a captive. You are sucked up into that mysterious state that, like a person seen across a lawn through drifting smoke, is partly real and partly vapor.

“Even Justice has its victims,” he said. “And they are sometimes more greatly wronged than even the victims of crime.”

“Everything is reduced nowadays to a business transaction—even death.”

“In the words of that excellent Franciscan philosopher John Punch, ‘Things are not to be multiplied without necessity.’

Tears are the only known acid that eats away at the male ego, and it’s important to know how to summon them in seconds. Delayed tears are no good: They go off quicker than even the dampest cheeses.

“Surprise is the sharpest arrow in the quiver,”

If you wish to be noted for truthfulness, you must always tell the truth—but not all of it. I remembered Daffy reading aloud to me a quote by Mark Twain: Truth is the most precious thing we have. Economize it.