Guilty by Definition Quotes

“Alex had what the Italians called sprezzatura--the kind of studied nonchalance that implies no time has been taken at all to look a certain way, even if it has been achieved through considerable effort.”
― Susie Dent, Guilty by Definition

“She didn't like flat-out drunkenness. Even as a student it had somehow scared her. It was true she liked its language: on paper it amused her. 'Cherubimical', for example, which once described the happy drunk who goes around hugging everyone; but for every one of those there were dozens of 'lick-spigots' and 'tosspots'.
Drunks could turn.”
― Susie Dent, Guilty by Definition

“It spoke of the centuries of prejudice that had inhibited women's progress, denied them the space to achieve their potential. So that whenever we read of a woman in the past who was ducked as a witch, of one who was thought to be possessed by devils, or who silently mothered a remarkable man, we will be on the track of a lost poet, a forgotten storyteller who also dreamed, wrote, imagined. What if these women had been allowed to let their creativity run free and unimpeded? History had decided instead that they would go half crazed with fear and frustration, their words unsigned and unacknowledged.”
― Susie Dent, Guilty by Definition

“You think it's a man?"
"Oh, of course it's a bloody man, Alex.”
― Susie Dent, Guilty by Definition

“Exactly. But we can never know what's really going on in another person's head. We're all so obsessed with our own problems and with how people see us that we create simple silhouettes for everyone else.”
― Susie Dent, Guilty by Definition