The Player on the Other Side Quotes

“It was wrong. It was like arresting the gun for murder.”
― Ellery Queen, The Player on the Other Side

“Had Walter ever read Bernard Shaw (he had not), he might have been pleased with the line, "When you have learned something, my dear, it often feels at first as if you had lost something.”
― Ellery Queen, The Player on the Other Side

“The girl was kind in a special way; when you spoke to her, she seemed to stop thinking of whatever she been thinking and listened to you altogether.”
― Ellery Queen, The Player on the Other Side

“There’s no wonderment left in the real world any longer. Or rather, everything is so wonderful the wonder’s gone out of it.”
― Ellery Queen, The Player on the Other Side

“Now, Jehovah, Yahweh, was a member of no Trinity, was represented by no lambs, suffered no little children. He was an almighty vindictive deity. He meddled in individual lives. And He was always right because He was.”
― Ellery Queen, The Player on the Other Side

“If it pains you to discover that a Nice Man can be a crumbum, Tom, it's life you've got to object to, not Percy in particular.”
― Ellery Queen, The Player on the Other Side

“Why did people do it? Why this herd curiosity about a street, a house, windows, doors? He was a public servant, the Inspector mused, but there were times when he would enjoy loading all the rubbernecks onto barges and towing them out to sea to be served, with ceremony, to sharks.”
― Ellery Queen, The Player on the Other Side

“The place smelled male, not the metal-and-soap maleness of a locker room nor the malt-and-sawdust maleness of an old-time corner saloon, but the leather-and-oiled-wood maleness of a city club, as finished and self-consistent as the ash of a fine cigar. At sight of the skirted figure stalking him, the sole visible attendant took refuge behind a showcase; surely a giraffe, were it a male one, would have startled him less.”
― Ellery Queen, The Player on the Other Side

“He was startled, but there was that about him which made it impossible to show what he felt, an instant and utter reflex of stillness to counteract all outward evidence of surprise, fear, anything.”
― Ellery Queen, The Player on the Other Side