A Beautiful Blue Death Quotes

“Her strength was in the integrity of her actions; she never compromised what she believed she ought to do.”
― Charles Finch, A Beautiful Blue Death

“...It had been a perfect nap -- the sort a man runs into now and again by chance...”
― Charles Finch, A Beautiful Blue Death

“the boredom of childhood is different, richer and more special than the boredom of adulthood,”
― Charles Finch, A Beautiful Blue Death

“He had done well as the mint’s director, a job in which he worked hard—apparently, according to most people, because he so loved the material of his labor: namely, money.”
― Charles Finch, A Beautiful Blue Death

“He was currently the director of the Royal Mint, a position once held by Sir Isaac Newton, which explained why he had begun to buy the physicist’s possessions at recent auctions.”
― Charles Finch, A Beautiful Blue Death

“What bliss was there to compare to a warm fire, fresh socks, and buttered toast on a cold day!”
― Charles Finch, A Beautiful Blue Death

“When I woke up. I saw what an insidious, awful person my cousin was—truly was— for the first time. I felt such sorrow, then. It’s no excuse, none; but it’s the truth.”
― Charles Finch, A Beautiful Blue Death

“Made our parents enemies. That was the reason Eustace and I first became close. We hated him.”
― Charles Finch, A Beautiful Blue Death

“What happened then, we know. They planned to murder Soames, under the favorable condition of a ball, which adds confusion to any incident, and with the false lead of the valuable object in Barnard’s house, which would divert any detective”
― Charles Finch, A Beautiful Blue Death

“He hates the feeling of inequality that was instilled in him by his rich uncle.”
― Charles Finch, A Beautiful Blue Death

“I disregard your profession as sheer nonsense, particularly for a man of your birth, sir, if I am to speak plainly.”
― Charles Finch, A Beautiful Blue Death

“Barnard protested at first, arguing that his own presence in the house, as an officer of the mint, surely constituted protection. The very fact that we had chosen his house, after the attacks on the mint, seemed proof to him.”
― Charles Finch, A Beautiful Blue Death

“know all these things. But don’t become black inside. You may think you’re left with nothing, but you still have your memories of her, and you have time. Sorrow is all very well but, as the church says, darkness never lasts, and light always comes. Even when it doesn’t seem so, my boy.”
― Charles Finch, A Beautiful Blue Death

“It could be cowardice or compassion; he cared little what it was called. It was in him, and that was all.”
― Charles Finch, A Beautiful Blue Death

“If I ever turn to crime, Exeter, I shall do better than that, I assure you.”
― Charles Finch, A Beautiful Blue Death

“Why would anyone kill Prue Smith, if not for love or money? To keep her quiet.”
― Charles Finch, A Beautiful Blue Death

“Henry, explain to me how the servants were stationed tonight. It seems absurdly dangerous for someone to commit a murder here if there were servants coming up and down the stairs all the time.”
― Charles Finch, A Beautiful Blue Death

“It is! For us to have such conservative values, values that would have constrained our most revered”
― Charles Finch, A Beautiful Blue Death

“They’re like rabbits, you know. They keep multiplying. Every time you think they’re gone, another six of them jump out and ask what you think about some horrible scarf or hat or something. It’s absolutely harrowing.”
― Charles Finch, A Beautiful Blue Death

“Lenox had been to the Rookery on cases. It was no place to be caught even in broad daylight: narrow streets with tenements on either side; a foul smell mixed with sulfurous coal of people who couldn’t wash and lived close together; prostitutes in threadbare dresses laughing ostentatiously and offering their business, while they sipped penny pints of gin; gangs of children roaming here and there, picking pockets”
― Charles Finch, A Beautiful Blue Death

“I daresay. I ask you, what sort of man thinks that spying consists of standing in the hallway in front of one’s damn bedroom? About as subtle as a slosh on the head with a stick.”
― Charles Finch, A Beautiful Blue Death

“seek no glory, no riches, nor any of the like, you see, and I don’t mind a bit of collaboration, if the situation calls for it.”
― Charles Finch, A Beautiful Blue Death

“Exeter was the sort of man who had joined the Yard partly for power and partly because of a sense of duty, but never because it was his true vocation.”
― Charles Finch, A Beautiful Blue Death

“myself would have made a point of seeing which other people left the room, if I knew that this sort of insulting suspicion were going to be directed at me.”
― Charles Finch, A Beautiful Blue Death

“When you find out what Miss Smith was like, Graham, be sure to find out whether she was exotic or mysterious or anything like that. And what those words mean.”
― Charles Finch, A Beautiful Blue Death

“He and Lady Jane ignored that separation, but most men spoke very little with women except at parties, and were most comfortable playing a hand of cards or smoking a cigar with their friends, a kind of solidarity encouraged in grammar school, public school, and university, all of which excluded women.”
― Charles Finch, A Beautiful Blue Death

“But the Dials wasn’t the worst part of London in Lenox’s opinion; that was the Rookery, by Bainbridge Street in East London. The vices here were drink and cruelty. The vices there were theft and prostitution.”
― Charles Finch, A Beautiful Blue Death

“He thought guiltily that he was glad he could afford—literally—not to put up with a man like Barnard. If only Exeter had been slightly more intelligent. . . . But then, he thought, if wishes were horses, beggars would ride.”
― Charles Finch, A Beautiful Blue Death

“Lenox found Graham to be almost perfect in this unique role: honest, respectful but never toadying, willing to make a point that might disagree with his employer’s—always, in short, his own man. Of all the men he knew, he thought Graham among the finest.”
― Charles Finch, A Beautiful Blue Death

“Someone wrote this with their own pen and left it here. Notice the small squiggly letters— probably somebody trying to hide their handwriting. Forger’s tremor.”
― Charles Finch, A Beautiful Blue Death