Morena’s Reviews > The Green Baize Door > Status Update

“But enough of my youthful misdeeds. [M] tells me you’ve come on urgent business. It must be pressing to have brought you so far. What is it we can do for you?”
Marie hesitated. Mr. Lett’s well-mannered gallantry was of a piece with the surroundings: the sofa, the wallpaper, the teacups—everything elegant and clean. Speaking of her family, of their troubles, felt like letting a sounder of swine loose in the room.”

“There isn’t one of us who hasn’t thought about how much better off we'd be once the old girl kicked off.” He tried to sound cheerful, but tears choked his voice. “Well, she finally has, and I’m sorry if I’m not the hypocrite you all are. Go ahead and playact for one another if you must, I have better things to do.”

It's always the morally corrupt characters that are so much fun to read.

“Weeks and then months passed in a haze. Sometimes he missed her so much he felt he would die of it, but then he remembered the tug at the curtain and the coldness of the heart that had moved it. When he conjured up the image of Marie’s face, he began to detect an arrogance, a cruelty in it, he had never noticed before.”

“Some said the liquor here was cut with sulphuric acid, turpentine, and lime oil. It certainly tasted vile. The contents of his cup scorched a path from his lips clear down to his intestines, but it was damn effective. A sign above the bar read “Drunk for a penny, Dead drunk for two."
Tonight, William thought reaching for the bottle, was a two-penny night.”

“I don’t care if yous were on yer way to Hades to sup with the devil himself, I’m wantin’ a word!’ Griggs wagged a filthy finger in her face. His nail was a dark line, as though it had been drawn on in India ink. ”