The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie (Flavia de Luce, #1)

by Alan Bradley

Poor Dogger! That’s what I thought, even though Daphne told me I should never say that about anyone: “It’s not only condescending, it fails to take into account the future,” she said.

Heaven must be a place where the library is open twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week.

I detected instantly that she didn’t like me. It’s a fact of life that a girl can tell in a flash if another girl likes her.

You see, Flavia, silence is sometimes the most costly of commodities.

I had observed—although I did not often make use of the fact—that there were times when a touch could say things that words could not.

WHENEVER I’M OUT-OF-DOORS AND FIND MYSELF wanting to have a first-rate think, I fling myself down on my back, throw my arms and legs out so that I look like an asterisk, and gaze at the sky.