The Dead in Their Vaulted Arches (Flavia de Luce, #6)

by Alan Bradley

It’s things like this that really shake me: sudden terrifying glimpses into the world of being an adult, and they are sometimes things that I am not sure I really want to know.

Death is a bore. It is even harder on the survivors than on the deceased, who at least don’t have to worry about when to sit and when to stand, or when to permit a pale smile and when to glance tragically away.

“The poet Cowper,” he said, “who knew whereof he spoke, once wrote, ‘God moves in a mysterious way, his wonders to perform.’ We mere mortals must never question what we sometimes take to be the blind workings of Fate.”