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

by Alan Bradley

a cup of ale without a wench, why, alas, ’tis like an egg without salt or a red herring without mustard.”

there are times that I see, but do not observe.

a fugitive tear is making its way to my right eye, even as we speak.”

“the vicissitudes of daily life.”

touched my forehead to his, and for a few moments as my heart slowed we stood there in the starlight, communicating in a way that is far older than words.

I found myself seized by hereditary guilt.

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

Now there fell between us one of those silences that occur when two people are getting to know each other: not yet warm and friendly, but neither cold nor wary.

“Love’s not some big river that flows on and on forever, and if you believe it is, you’re a bloody fool. It can be dammed up until nothing’s left but a trickle …” “Or stopped completely,” I added. She did not reply. I

He had the fatal gift of making people believe him.”

gazing unconcernedly off into the distance, like someone who has broken wind at a banquet and is trying to pretend it wasn’t him.

they had never seemed threatening: no more than a distant shadow, really, like war—or death. You knew it was there but you didn’t spend all day fretting about it.

There is also the undeniable fact that when one reaches a certain age, one hesitates to take on a new cargo of trouble. It is as if, having experienced a certain amount of grief in a lifetime, one is given pass-slip to hand in to the Great Headmaster in the Sky.

a delicious little shudder shook my shoulders.

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

Thinking and prayer are much the same thing anyway, when you stop to think about it—if that makes any sense. Prayer goes up and thought comes down—or so it seems. As far as I can tell, that’s the only difference.