A Red Herring Without Mustard (Flavia de Luce #3)

by Alan Bradley

I’d learned quite early in life that the mind loves nothing better than to spook itself with outlandish stories, as if the various coils of the brain were no more than a troop of roly-poly Girl Guides huddled over a campfire in the darkness of the skull.

there’s no better way to mask a lie—or at least a glaring omission—than to wrap it in an emotional outpouring of truth.

The very best people are like that. They don’t entangle you like flypaper.

fraternizing—or whatever you call it when sisters do it—with the enemy diluted one’s resolve to kick them in the teeth.

In spite of its size, Buckshaw had all the comfort of a submarine.

“But then, to an old man, even torture can be a welcome relief to boredom, so I often made the ascent out of nothing more than spite.

Although Gladys’s black paint was now spattered with mud, she seemed as frisky as if she had just been curried with a bristled brush and wiped down to perfection.

There’s nothing that a liar hates more than finding that another liar has lied to them.

“We always want to love the recipients of our charity,” the doctor said, negotiating a sharp bend in the road with a surprising demonstration of steering skill, “but it is not necessary. Indeed, it is sometimes not possible.”