The 39 Steps Quotes

“I believe everything out of the common. The only thing to distrust is the normal.”
― John Buchan, The 39 Steps

“A fool tries to look different: a clever man looks the same and is different.”
― John Buchan, The 39 Steps

“It struck me that Albania was the sort of place that might keep a man from yawning.”
― John Buchan, The 39 Steps

“I am an ordinary sort of fellow, not braver than other people, but I hate to see a good man downed, and that long knife would not be the end of Scudder if I could play the game in his place.”
― John Buchan, The 39 Steps

“If you’re going to be killed you invent some kind of flag and country to fight for, and if you survive you get to love the thing”
― John Buchan, The 39 Steps

“The men who knew that he knew what he knew had found him”
― John Buchan, The 39 Steps

“It was a soft breathless June morning, with a promise of sultriness later...”
― John Buchan, The 39 Steps

“Capital," he said," had no conscience and no fatherland.”
― John Buchan, The 39 Steps

“By God!' he whispered, drawing his breath in sharply, 'it is all pure Rider Haggard and Conan Doyle.”
― John Buchan, The 39 Steps

“My thoughts hovered over all varieties of mortal edible, and finally settled on a porterhouse steak and a quart of bitter with a welsh rabbit to follow. In longing hopelessly for these dainties I fell asleep.”
― John Buchan, The 39 Steps

“I was not a murderer, but I had become an unholy liar, a shameless impostor, and a highwayman with a marked taste for expensive motor-cars.”
― John Buchan, The 39 Steps

“Pardon,' he said, 'I'm a bit rattled tonight. You see, I happen at this moment to be dead.”
― John Buchan, The 39 Steps

“All this was very loose guessing, and I don't pretend it was ingenious or scientific. I wasn't any kind of Sherlock Holmes. But I have always fancied I had a kind of instinct about questions like this. I don't know if I can explain myself, but I used to use my brains as far as they went, and after they came to a blank wall I guessed, and I usually found my guesses pretty right.”
― John Buchan, The 39 Steps

“About six in the evening I came out of the moorland to a white ribbon of road which wound up the narrow vale of a lowland stream. As I followed it, fields gave place to bent, the glen became a plateau, and presently I had reached a kind of pass where a solitary house smoked in the twilight. The road swung over a bridge, and leaning on the parapet was a young man. He was smoking a long clay pipe and studying the water with spectacled eyes. In his left hand was a small book with a finger marking the place. Slowly he repeated— As when a Gryphon through the wilderness With winged step, o'er hill and moory dale Pursues the Arimaspian. He jumped round as my step rung on the keystone, and I saw a pleasant sunburnt boyish face. 'Good evening to you,' he said gravely. 'It's a fine night for the road.' The smell of peat smoke and of some savoury roast floated to me from the house.”
― John Buchan, The Thirty Nine Steps

“I had a fine prospect of the whole ring of moorland. I saw the car speed away with two occupants, and a man on a hill pony riding east. I judged they were looking for me, and I wished them joy of their quest.”
― John Buchan, The 39 Steps

“A little thing, lasting only a second, and the odds were a thousand to one that I might have had my eyes on my cards at the time and missed it. But I didn't, and, in a flash, the air seemed to clear. Some shadow lifted from my brain, and I was looking at the three men with full and absolute recognition.”
― John Buchan, The Thirty-Nine Steps

“(Thirty-nine steps)' was the phrase; and at its last time of use it ran—'(Thirty-nine steps, I counted them—high tide 10.17 p.m.)'. I could make nothing of that.”
― John Buchan, The Thirty-Nine Steps

“gave half-a-crown to a beggar because I saw him yawn; he was a fellow-sufferer.”
― John Buchan, The Thirty-Nine Steps

“There was more in those eyes than any common triumph. They had been hooded like a bird of prey, and now they flamed with a hawk's pride. A white fanatic heat burned in them, and I realized for the first time the terrible thing I had been up against. This man was more than a spy; in his foul way he had been a patriot.”
― John Buchan, The Thirty-Nine Steps

“Beklager så meget , sa han. Jeg er ikke helt meg selv i kveld. Saken er nemlig den at jeg er død i dette øyeblikk.”
― John Buchan, The 39 Steps

“I skumringen kom mannen hennes tilbake fra heiene. Det var en mager kjempe som tok ett skritt der andre dødelige trengte tre.”
― John Buchan, The 39 Steps

“Contrary to general belief, I was not a murderer, but I had become an unholy liar, a shameless impostor, and a highwayman with a marked taste for expensive motor-cars.”
― John Buchan, The 39 Steps

“He mentioned the name of a woman—Julia Czechenyi—as having something to do with the danger. She would be the decoy, I gathered, to get Karolides out of the care of his guards. He talked, too, about a Black Stone and a man that lisped in his speech, and he described very particularly somebody that he never referred to without a shudder—an old man with a young voice who could hood his eyes like a hawk.”
― John Buchan, The 39 Steps

“The road led through a wood of great beeches and then into a shallow valley, with the green backs of downs peeping over the distant trees. After Scotland the air smelt heavy and flat, but infinitely sweet, for the limes and chestnuts and lilac bushes were domes of blossom. Presently I came to a bridge, below which a clear slow stream flowed between snowy beds of water-buttercups. A little above it was a mill; and the lasher made a pleasant cool sound in the scented dusk. Somehow the place soothed me and put me at my ease. I fell to whistling as I looked into the green depths, and the tune which came to my lips was “Annie Laurie”.”
― John Buchan, The 39 Steps

“He actually blushed. "I want to write books," he said.

"And what better chance could you ask?" I cried. "Man, I’ve often thought that an innkeeper would make the best story-teller in the world."

"Not now," he said eagerly. "Maybe in the old days when you had pilgrims and ballad-makers and highwaymen and mail-coaches on the road. But not now. Nothing comes here but motor-cars full of fat women, who stop for lunch, and a fisherman or two in the spring, and the shooting tenants in August. There is not much material to be got out of that. I want to see life, to travel the world, and write things like Kipling and Conrad. But the most I’ve done yet is to get some verses printed in Chambers’s Journal.”
― John Buchan, The 39 Steps

“and they looked to see a new world emerge. The capitalists would rake in the shekels, and make fortunes by buying up wreckage. Capital, he said, had no conscience and no fatherland. Besides, the Jew was behind it, and the Jew hated Russia worse than hell.”
― John Buchan, The 39 Steps

“His name was Marmaduke Jopley, and he was an offence to creation.”
― John Buchan, The 39 Steps

“The devils are after me, and the police are after them. It’s a race that I mean to win.”
― John Buchan, The 39 Steps

“and the amusements of London seemed as flat as soda-water that has been standing in the sun.”
― John Buchan, The Thirty-Nine Steps

“I made a fine tramp and a fair drover;”
― John Buchan, The Thirty-Nine Steps