The Lantern Men Quotes

“PC Roy ‘Rocky’ Taylor, a man who, according to Clough, needs to be watered twice a week.”
― Elly Griffiths, The Lantern Men

“He can tell Judy is angry with him. Her face is expressionless but he doesn’t have two older sisters for nothing.”
― Elly Griffiths, The Lantern Men

“No,’ says Nelson. ‘I haven’t got time to read signs.’ Ruth is willing to bet that he walked on the grass too.”
― Elly Griffiths, The Lantern Men

“We know that Stonehenge marked a shift in the Neolithic psyche from solar to lunar allegiance . . .’ What does this mean? No one has any idea what Neolithic people thought of the sun or the moon. We can theorise that monuments like Stonehenge had some sort of astronomical significance but we can’t know. Ruth resists the temptation to put a red line through the sentence. Instead she just writes in the margin, ‘Really?”
― Elly Griffiths, The Lantern Men

“Besides, she loves being in the college at night. There’s a palpable sense of industry and purpose, the ancient building heavy with centuries of study and learning.”
― Elly Griffiths, The Lantern Men

“They’re also called “ignis fatuus”, that’s Latin for foolish fire. Then there are the glowing owls too.’ Glowing owls. Jesus wept. ‘Thank you, Cathbad. You should go on Mastermind. Specialist subject: General Weirdness.”
― Elly Griffiths, The Lantern Men

“Nettles thrive on nutrients from human waste and so their existence on a site usually means that people have lived there — or that there’s a dead body buried in the vicinity.”
― Elly Griffiths, The Lantern Men

“The lantern men of the marshes? Of course I have. They lead unwary travellers to their deaths. They’re linked to will-o’-the-wisps, spirits who are shut out of heaven and hell. Some say that the original was a blacksmith called Will who was so evil that he was condemned to walk the earth for ever, never ascending to heaven or descending to hell. The devil gave him a single coal from hell to keep him warm and he carried it in a pumpkin. That’s where jack-o’-lanterns come from. You know, the lighted pumpkins that children make on Halloween.”
― Elly Griffiths, The Lantern Men

“It was a summer’s evening, still half light at ten o’clock, a liminal zone between day and night, a deceitful, untrustworthy time.”
― Elly Griffiths, The Lantern Men

“She is puffing on one of those vape things. There’s a sickly sweet smell of mango in the air. It makes Ruth feel rather nostalgic for the days when smokers gathered outside offices for cigarette breaks, companionably coughing their lungs out.”
― Elly Griffiths, The Lantern Men

“The things we fear in secret always happen.”
― Elly Griffiths, The Lantern Men