C. > C.'s Quotes

“Wikipedia says I have Antisocial Personality Disorder, which is dumb, because I'm all kids of social--I love society, society is like the ocean to my shark--and I have plenty of personality, and it's only a disorder if it messes up your life, and my life is awesome.”
― Harrison Geillor, The Twilight of Lake Woebegotten

“My little old dog
a heart-beat
at my feet”
― Edith Wharton

“Once in every few publishing seasons there is an Event. For no apparent reason, the great heart of the Public gives a startled jump, and the public's great purse is emptied to secure copies of some novel which has stolen into the world without advance advertising and whose only claim to recognition is that The Licensed Victuallers' Gazette has stated in a two-line review that it is 'readable'.”
― P.G. Wodehouse, Mulliner Nights

“The good ended happily, and the bad unhappily. That is what Fiction means.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest

“Sixty-five years ago [written 2009], in a brief lull between storms in a remarkably stormy June, even by the standards of Channel weather, the heirs of Harold and the kinsmen of the Conqueror came to Normandy. They were supported by the remnants of their first, North American, empire, the two great nations that they had planted in the New World in the time of Good Queen Bess and James 6th and 1st: the Americans, who had rebelled in the name of the rights of Englishmen, and the Canadians, who had stood loyal in the name of the Crown. … The honours of these regiments are ancient and moving: Minden and Malplaquet, Mysore, Badajoz, Waterloo, Inkerman, Gallipoli, the Somme, Imjin. None shines more brightly than Normandy 1944. The paths of glory may lead but to the grave; yet all, even golden boys and girls, must come to dust. It is a better path to the grave than any of the others, not because glory is something to seek, but because, not once or twice in our long island story, the way of duty has been the path to glory; and duty is to be done. …Let us now praise famous men, and our fathers that begat us.”
― G.M.W. Wemyss

“There are two primary strains in the Conservative Party: grocers, and grandees. … By ‘grandees’ and ‘grocers’, I am not referring to social class or any of that; nor do I refer to the Worshipful Company of Grocers, all cloves and camels. I refer rather to two fundamental positions within the Conservative Party, regardless of one’s antecedents. … A grandee Conservative sees the country as a village: a village of which he and his party, when in government, act the Squire. As the Squire, the grandee moves jovially amongst his tenants in their tied cottages, dispensing largesse and reproof…. There are two problems with this model. The first is that HMG is not the Squire and the subjects of the Crown are not the smocked tenantry of the government of the day. The second is that these principles – or instincts, as one can hardly call them principles – however different they may be to the fiercely held maxims of Labour old and new, lead in the end to the same statist solutions as those the Left proposes, and to accepting and ‘managing’ statism when a Conservative government succeeds a Labour one. It is the grocers who will always and rightly attempt to roll back the State and its reach in favour of liberty.”
― G.M.W. Wemyss

“For the author as for God, standing outwith his creation, all times are one; all times are now. In mine own country, we accept as due and right – as very meet, right, and our bounden duty – the downs and their orchids and butterflies, the woods and coppices, ash, beech, oak, and field maple, rowan, wild cherry, holly, and hazel, bluebells in their season and willow, alder, and poplar in the wetter ground. We accept as proper and unremarkable the badger and the squirrel, the roe deer and the rabbit, the fox and the pheasant, as the companions of our walks and days. We remark with pleasure, yet take as granted, the hedgerow and the garden, the riot of snowdrops, primroses, and cowslips, the bright flash of kingfishers, the dart of swallows and the peaceful homeliness of house martins, the soft nocturnal glimmer of glow worm and the silent nocturnal swoop of owl.”
― G.M.W. Wemyss

“We live, all of us, in sprung rhythm. Even in cities, folk stir without knowing it to the surge in the blood that is the surge and urgency of season. In being born, we have taken seisin of the natural world, and as ever, it is the land which owns us, not we, the land. Even in the countryside, we dwell suspended between the rhythms of earth and season, weather and sky, and those imposed by metropolitan clocks, at home and abroad.
When does the year begin? No; ask rather, When does it not? For us – all of us – as much as for Mr Eliot, midwinter spring is its own season; for all of us, if we but see it, our world is as full of time-coulisses as was Thomas Mann’s.
Countrymen know this, with the instinct they share with their beasts. Writers want to know it also, and to articulate what the countryman knows and cannot, perhaps, express to those who sense but do not know, immured in sad conurbations, rootless amidst Betjeman’s frightful vision of soot and stone, worker’s flats and communal canteens, where it is the boast of pride that a man doesn’t let the grass grow under his feet.
As both countryman and writer, I have a curious relationship to time.”
― G.M.W. Wemyss

“I loathe the grading of tragedy and the jostling for pre-eminence amongst the bereaved, that most disgusting example of the disgusting habit of claiming a starring role in any incident that touches one.”
― Catriona McPherson, After the Armistice Ball

“Dreadful fire at Reiver’s Rest,”’ she intoned with relish. ‘“Poor” – it’s Cara, isn’t it, madam? – “Poor Cara tragically lost. Staying in Gatehouse to comfort poor mother.”’ And so on. It became clear that the telegram was not her natural genre, but I managed in the end to remove most of the adverbs and settle on ‘perished’ as an acceptable midway point between her eulogies and my apparently shocking bluntness.”
― Catriona McPherson, After the Armistice Ball

“That kind of flabby sentiment – thinking that there is good in everyone – is responsible for a great deal of harm.”
― Catriona McPherson, After the Armistice Ball

“Look here, Mrs. Bradley," he said. "I feel a pretty frightful bounder telling you all this about the poor girl, but I think some woman ought to know about it. On Wednesday night, yes, last night, Eleanor came into my bedroom at about half-past twelve and--and wanted to stay there! I thought it was a ghost at first. I had terrible difficulty in getting rid of her. In fact, I had to get out of bed and shove her outside and lock the door. Choice, isn't it?"
...
"Of course you will lock your door tonight," she said.
"You bet I shall," Bertie said fervently, "and nothing short of the house catching fire is going to persuade me to open it.”
― Gladys Mitchell, A Speedy Death

“Oh, you know,’ I said. ‘You say to yourself I’ll spend next week on Christmas shopping and then the week before Christmas on writing letters and going round the tenants and I’ll just be able to fit it all in, and then you look at your diary and you realize that next week is the week before Christmas which means there’s exactly half as much time as you thought there was and you haven’t a hope in hell.”
― Catriona McPherson, The Burry Man's Day

“She wants to see the children before she dies,” pronounced his wife. “Poor thing. I expect she’s very lonely and unhappy right out there in the country. Write back quickly, dear, and tell her how very welcome she is.” “I’d better tip the boys the wink to be civil to her,” said Godfrey, pursuing a different train of thought. “Her money’s got to be left somewhere, and she was never one to be fond of cats.”
― Gladys Mitchell, The Longer Bodies: A Mrs. Bradley Mystery

“Well,” continued Hilary, “it felt like somebody’s face! You know when you play water polo, and you push a chap’s face with your foot—” “What sort of water polo do you play, for heaven’s sake?” asked Richard Cowes.”
― Gladys Mitchell, The Longer Bodies: A Mrs. Bradley Mystery

“What about Kost, sir? He’s a foreigner, you know.” “Yes,” said the inspector, allowing to pass unchallenged the usual English implication that foreigners are always either lunatics or criminals or both, “but the motive?”
― Gladys Mitchell, The Longer Bodies: A Mrs. Bradley Mystery

“Bobby squealed with delight. “I’ll take a norange one and a labbender one,” he said happily. “Labbender is sometimes almost always my very favrit color.”
― Julie Campbell, The Secret of the Mansion

“He’s dead, Jim,”
― Julie Campbell, The Secret of the Mansion

“And then,” she finished, “there was the awful sound of a man crying, Honey.”
― Julie Campbell, The Red Trailer Mystery: Trixie Belden

“She turned as a husky voice behind her said, “They’re waiting for you at a table inside.” Jim gave her a little push. “In you go, kid; I’m top man around here now.”
― Julie Campbell, The Red Trailer Mystery: Trixie Belden

“Get to your dusting, slave-girl. We vacationing men will take over the sleuthing!”
― Julie Campbell, The Gatehouse Mystery: Trixie Belden

“Human beings weren't designed to handle the amount of stress our modern life loads on us, which makes it difficult to hear our natural parenting instincts. It's almost as if we're forced to parent in our spare time, after meeting the demands of work, commuting and household responsibilities.”
― Laura Markham, Peaceful Parent, Happy Kids: How to Stop Yelling and Start Connecting

“First, Edwin was a vampire.

Second, he loved me--or at least thought my blood smelled delicious, which, for a vampire, was probably the next best thing.

And third, I would get him to turn me into a vampire too, no matter how much scheming, manipulation, or treachery it required.”
― Harrison Geillor, The Twilight of Lake Woebegotten

“Jane’s little cowgirl seemed made to order for riding Tenny’s bucking bronco.”
― Julie Campbell, The Mystery in Arizona: Trixie Belden

“Mrs. Wheeler said to bring these sandwiches up to you,” she said and put a tray of hot dogs on an old trunk.”
― Kathryn Kenny, The Mysterious Code: Trixie Belden

“Seriously, Enid has a really unhealthy obsession with Elizabeth. For her Christmas present, Enid buys her a silk, heart-shaped box. Um.”
― Robin Hardwick, If You Lived Here, You'd Be Perfect By Now: The Unofficial Guide to Sweet Valley High

“The town of Sweet Valley should have a sign in the town square that reads “____ Days Since Last Dead Boyfriend.”
― Robin Hardwick, If You Lived Here, You'd Be Perfect By Now: The Unofficial Guide to Sweet Valley High

“I’m not an expert murderer or anything, but this plan involves gaining their trust and affection, and counting on the twins not telling each other about the new guy in their life, instead of just say, running up and stabbing them.”
― Robin Hardwick, If You Lived Here, You'd Be Perfect By Now: The Unofficial Guide to Sweet Valley High

“You feel rain in a used bookstore. The old pages pick up the damp and mustiness like old bones do rheumatism.”
― Josh Lanyon, Fatal Shadows

“Alice notices that Suzanne looks pale and weak, and that made her look “lovelier than the last time she saw her.” Note to teenage girls: get a serious illness.”
― Robin Hardwick, If You Lived Here, You'd Be Perfect By Now: The Unofficial Guide to Sweet Valley High