Closed Casket (New Hercule Poirot Mysteries, #2)

by Sophie Hannah

Conceal and reveal: how appropriate that those two words should rhyme. They sound like opposites and yet, as all good storytellers know, much can be revealed by the tiniest attempts at concealment, and new revelations often hide as much as they make plain.

Someone ought to make a competitive sport out of trying to walk excessively slowly; it tests muscles of which one was previously unaware.

‘Why do we allow words to have such power over us?’ Kimpton asked of nobody in particular. He had started to walk slowly around the room. ‘They are lost in air the moment they leave our mouths, yet they stay with us forever if they’re arranged in a memorable order.

‘One ought not to use words carelessly, or even spontaneously. Once they are launched, they cannot be called back.

‘People are peculiar little machines, Edward,’ she whispered to me. ‘Considerably more peculiar than anything else in the world.’

‘Good sense appears the most underhand of tactics to a man who has no reserves of his own to draw upon.’

Most people are scared of most things—never forget that! It is really only writers and artists who can cope with the puzzling ambiguities—and those with an investigative inclination.

people do not care to listen to those who thrust unpalatable scenarios in front of them; they prefer to hear only gilded pleasantries.