Johannes Cabal the Detective Quotes

“They served to remind Cabal - should a reminder ever be necessary - why his social skills were so poor: people were loathsome and not worth the practise.”
― Jonathan L. Howard, Johannes Cabal the Detective

“There is possibly no insult so calculated to sting the English as the suggestion that they may at any time be considered foreign, as this flies in the face of the obvious truth that the whole of Creation actually belongs to the English, and that they are just allowing everybody else to camp out on bits of it from a national sense of noblesse oblige.”
― Jonathan L. Howard, Johannes Cabal the Detective

“Cabal regarded her with mild amusement. “Smile when you whisper,” he advised her. “You’re supposed to be flirting with me, if you recall?”

She stared at him icily. Then suddenly her expression thawed and she smiled winsomely, her eyes dewy with romantic love. “Oh, sweetheart… somebody tried to kill you? Whosoever would do such a thing to my nimpty-bimpty snookums?”

Cabal could not have been more horrified if she’d pulled off her face to reveal a gaping chasm of eternal night from which glistening tentacles coiled and groped. That had already happened to him once in his life, and he wasn’t keen to repeat the experience.

“What?” he managed in a dry whisper.

“Smile when you whisper,” she said, her expression fixed and blood-curdlingly coquettish. You’re supposed to be flirting with me, remember?”

“Please don’t do that.”
― Jonathan L. Howard, Johannes Cabal the Detective

“A census taker once tried to test me. I let my front garden eat him.”
― Jonathan L. Howard, The Detective

“Johannes Cabal disliked many things, despised fewer, loathed fewer still, and reserved true hatred for only a handful. Understanding how intense his personal definition of 'dislike' was, however, gives some impression of how hot his hatreds ran. This is a man who had, after all, shot men dead for making him faintly peeved.”
― Jonathan L. Howard, Johannes Cabal the Detective

“Guns don’t kill people. People kill people.” “But guns make it so much easier.”
― Jonathan L. Howard, The Detective

“Zombies are so passe”
― Jonathan L. Howard, The Detective

“Do you smoke, Herr Cabal?"
"Only to be antisocial," replied Cabal, making no move.”
― Jonathan L. Howard, Johannes Cabal the Detective

“... the first few minutes of a person's death are the most vitally important minutes of opportunity for a necromancer, [so] Cabal added, "Look, I have to go. Without the necessary chemicals, we'll lose whatever wits are still floating around his cooling brain. The only more immediate alternative that I can think of is a Tantric ritual involving necrophiliac sodomy and, frankly, I don't think my back is up to it. So, if you will excuse me?”
― Jonathan L. Howard, Johannes Cabal the Detective

“Guns don't kill people. People kill people.'
'But guns make it so much easier. Shall we go?”
― Jonathan L. Howard, Johannes Cabal the Detective

“Do shut your mouth--you'll catch flies sitting there like that.”
― Jonathan L. Howard, The Detective

“The only more immediate alternative that I can think of is a Tantric ritual involving necrophiliac sodomy and, frankly, I don't think my back is up to it.”
― Jonathan L. Howard, Johannes Cabal the Detective

“Sighing heavily, for he disliked violence generally and murder in particular, Cabal set off to commit violent murder.”
― Jonathan L. Howard, The Detective

“He’d asked for his to be cooked medium rare, which in Mirkarvian cuisine meant it had been shown a picture of an oven for a moment and then served. A very brief moment, mind.”
― Jonathan L. Howard, The Detective

“(D) Write a political treatise—not to exceed 250,000 words or 500 sides, whichever is less—detailing your solution to stabilising relations in the region. Military force above brigade level is not permitted, nor is divine intervention. You may include diagrams.”
― Jonathan L. Howard, The Detective

“Leonie Barrow's voice was quiet but clear. With Marechal's eyes on her, she said, "Cabal is more dangerous then you can believe, Count. Both the angels and the devils fear him. He's a monster, but an evenhanded one. I know he is capable of the most appalling acts of evil." Her glance moved to Cabal, who was listening dispassionately. "I believe he is also capable of great good. But to predict which he will do next isn't easy or safe."

Marechal grimaced. "What is your association with this man? Public relations or something?"

"I loathe him," she said with sudden venom. The, more quietly, "And I admire him. You're right; he didn't have to come back. He's taken a big risk, but I know he's taken bigger. I can't tell you whether he's a monster or playing the hero right now, but I know one thing. You made the biggest mistake of your life when you made an enemy of him.”
― Jonathan L. Howard, Johannes Cabal the Detective

“Even fear can be defeated by curiosity or, failing that, boredom”
― Jonathan L. Howard, Johannes Cabal the Detective

“Cabal looked at him. The expression “if looks could kill” does not begin to describe the pure corrosive abhorrence that he put into the glance. If, however, the steward had suddenly found himself transported far away and nailed, through his genitals, to the steeple of a church in the middle of a violent electrical storm, a more exact impression may be gained.”
― Jonathan L. Howard, The Detective

“Marriage, it seemed, was truly an institution; in this case, something along the lines of a prison or an asylum.”
― Jonathan L. Howard, Johannes Cabal the Detective

“There is possibly no insult so calculated to sting the English as the suggestion that they may at any time be considered foreign, as this flies in the face of the obvious truth that the whole of Creation actually belongs to the English, and they are just allowing everybody else to camp on bits of it from a national sense of noblesse oblige.”
― Jonathan L. Howard, The Detective

“In the last few months, he’d found himself prey to strange twinges that, after some research, he had discovered to be his conscience.”
― Jonathan L. Howard, The Detective

“He smiled, and it was like a bloodless cut. 'No,' he replied, amused by something. 'No, not a doctor. I haven't the bedside manner for it.”
― Jonathan L. Howard, Johannes Cabal the Detective

“She's a bike. A tart. A slut. She'll be buried in a Y-shaped coffin. A baggage. A hussy. She's the good time that was had by all. A wanton floozy." She looked closely at him, but he still seemed to be stuck on cricket. "A nymphomaniac."
The use of a technical term shook him from his paralysis. Realisation flooded his face and a silent "Oh!" filled his mouth.”
― Jonathan L. Howard, Johannes Cabal the Detective

“It seemed that nice hair and the eyes of a cherub had gained him attentions that he had construed as somehow inspired by his political thoughts. In this he was mistaken, an error of the sort commonly found among millionaires who believe that they are charismatic.”
― Jonathan L. Howard, Johannes Cabal the Detective

“The dead were moderately strong on history, weak on current events, and entirely useless for discerning what was to come. They were, after all, dead. Still, that was the dictionary definition of necromancy. Over”
― Jonathan L. Howard, The Detective

“Science and mathematics are wonderful things. They cut like an arc light of truth through the cobwebbed depths of supposition, superstition, instinct, and guile. For the scientific mind, it can sometimes become too easy to ignore these thin, insubstantial threads as irrelevant, but this can be a serious mistake.”
― Jonathan L. Howard, Johannes Cabal the Detective

“No man deserves to die like that."
"Or kicking on the end of a length of state-owned rope. Or blown to pieces on a battlefield. Or quietly in bed surrounded by loved ones. One cannot pick and choose. You shouldn’t be railing against the manner of death.”
― Jonathan L. Howard, Johannes Cabal the Detective

“Cabal could not have been more horrified if she’d pulled off her face to reveal a gaping chasm of eternal night from which glistening tentacles coiled and groped. That had already happened to him once in his life, and he wasn’t keen to repeat the experience.”
― Jonathan L. Howard, The Detective

“Thwarted, Cabal had settled on a Senzan revolver, but at least had the mild pleasure of finding one in an equally untidy calibre -- 10.35 mm. His mind was usually quite pristine, but --O secret sin!-- he had always taken a perverse joy in dangling decimals.”
― Jonathan L. Howard, Johannes Cabal the Detective

“The name suggested that where there were pork scratchings there were pork itchings, and mental images of pigs with terrible skin diseases filled his mind. Had he just been chewing on hog scabs?”
― Jonathan L. Howard, Johannes Cabal the Detective