The Grave's a Fine and Private Place (Flavia de Luce, #9)

by Alan Bradley

Words and crockery were thrown with equal carelessness. It didn’t seem to matter much who was hit.

I think it was the slobbering, more than anything, that put me off the cyanide. What self-respecting young woman would want to be found dead in her bedroom drowned in her own drool?

Robert Burton’s Anatomy of Melancholy

Oh, for the good old days, I thought, when Death was an everyday equal and not to be padlocked away like some dim-witted relative whom nobody wanted to see or spend time with.

Gorging on sweets together creates as strong a bond between two people as being in love. Or so it seems to me, although I’ve never been in love. Nor am I much accustomed to sugar. The war had seen to that.

life is full of death, and that it’s better to make friends with it than fight it.”

‘A good book,’ ” he said, squaring up the heavy volume reverently on the bedside table, “ ‘is the precious life-blood of a master spirit, embalmed and treasured up on purpose to a life beyond life.’ “Or so, at least, says Mr. Milton in his Areopagitica,” he added.

“I am not a betting man, Miss Flavia—except upon the great game of Life and Death. In my own turns at the table, I have been most fortunate to date.”

“Always flush when you are up to no good,” he said with a solemn face. “It puts them off the scent.”

‘Amazing’ is a word for wizards. I prefer to think of myself as merely practical.”

The humble paper clip, in certain circumstances, can be of more practical use than a magic wand.”

Gracie Fields’s wartime classics: the one about the girl in the munitions factory making the parts for some top-secret but important machine whose function

a joke, in order to be effective, must be at least half true.

“Someone once said that all Roman Catholics are Roman Catholics for the same reason, but every Anglican is Anglican for reasons of their own.”

When God has given you a great brain and long lashes, they may sometimes be the only weapons you have at your disposal, and it is best to know how to use them effectively.

Feminine intuition is no more than an acceptable excuse for female brains.

“You’re observing me observing you observing me. Is that the way the world works?”