The Beekeeper's Apprentice Quotes

“Eccentricty had flowered into madness.”
― Laurie R. King, The Beekeeper's Apprentice

“You cannot help being a female, and I should be something of a fool were I to discount your talents merely because of their housing.”
― Laurie R. King, The Beekeeper's Apprentice

“I took to the Bodleian library as to a lover and ... would sit long hours in Bodley's arms to emerge, blinking and dazed with the smell and feel of all those books.”
― Laurie R. King, The Beekeeper's Apprentice

“...but somehow the madness around me and the turmoil I carried within myself acted as counterweights, and I survived in the centre.”
― Laurie R. King, The Beekeeper's Apprentice

“The words given voice inside the mind are not always clear, however; they can be gentle and elliptical, what the prophets call the bat qol, the daughter of the voice of God, she who speaks in whispers and half-seen images.”
― Laurie R. King, The Beekeeper's Apprentice

“He said nothing. Very sarcastically.”
― Laurie R. King, The Beekeeper's Apprentice

“Holmes had cultivated the ability to still the noise of the mind, by smoking his pipe and playing nontunes on the violin. He once compared this mental state with the sort of passive seeing that enables the eye, in a dim light or at a great distance, to grasp details with greater clarity by focusing slightly to one side of the object of interest. When active, strained vision only obscures and frustrates, looking away often permits the eyes to see and interpret the shapes of what it sees. Thus does inattention allow the mind to register the still, small whisper of the daughter of the voice.”
― Laurie R. King, The Beekeeper's Apprentice

“I became, in other words, more like Holmes than the man himself: brilliant, driven to a point of obsession, careless of myself, mindless of others, but without the passion and the deep-down, inbred love for the good in humanity that was the basis of his entire career. He loved the humanity that could not understand or fully accept him; I, in the midst of the same human race, became a thinking machine.”
― Laurie R. King, The Beekeeper's Apprentice

“However, the mind has an amazing ability to continue worrying away at a problem all on its own, so that when the "Eureka!" comes it is as mysterious as if it were God speaking.”
― Laurie R. King, The Beekeeper's Apprentice

“My God, it can recognise another human being when it's hit over the head with one.”
― Laurie R. King, The Beekeeper's Apprentice

“Tell me about yourself, Miss Russell."

I started to give him the obligatory response, first the demurral and then the reluctant flat autobiography, but some slight air of polite inattention in his manner stopped me. Instead, I found myself grinning at him.

"Why don't you tell me about myself, Mr. Holmes?”
― Laurie R. King, The Beekeeper's Apprentice

“Do not neglect to bring your revolver, Russell. It may be needed, and it does us no good in your drawer with that disgusting cheese."
"My lovely Stilton; it's almost ripe, too. I do hope Mr. Thomas enjoys it."
"Any riper and it will eat through the woodwork and drop into the room below."
"You envy me my educated tastes."
"That I will not honour with a response. Get out the door, Russell.”
― Laurie R. King, The Beekeeper's Apprentice

“My God...it can think.”
― Laurie R. King, The Beekeeper's Apprentice

“I was merely going to say that I hope you realise that guilt is a poor foundation for a life, without other motivations beside it.”
― Laurie R. King, The Beekeeper's Apprentice

“Impossibility is a log thrown on the fires of love.”
― Laurie R. King, The Beekeeper's Apprentice

“Guessing is a weakness brought on by indolence and should never be confused with intuition.”
― Laurie R. King, The Beekeeper's Apprentice

“I took to the...Library as to a lover...”
― Laurie R. King, The Beekeeper's Apprentice

“. . . the first spring in five free from the rumour of guns across the Channel, a spring anxious to make up for the cold winter, life bursting out after four years of death. All of England raised her face to the sun. . .”
― Laurie R. King, The Beekeeper's Apprentice

“A quick mind is worthless unless you can control the emotions with it as well.”
― Laurie R. King, The Beekeeper's Apprentice

“I took the broom and made a wild sweep along the workbench, and an edge of the unwieldy head sent a tray of tools flying. Patrick picked up a chipped chisel and looked at me as if I had attacked his son.
"Have you never used a broom before?”
― Laurie R. King, The Beekeeper's Apprentice

“Who am I?’ you mean.” He smiled at the question and gave what was at first glance a most oblique answer. “Do you know what a fugue is?” “Are you changing the subject?” “No.” I thought in silence for some distance before his answer arranged itself sensibly in my mind. “I see. Two discrete sections of a fugue may not appear related, unless the listener has received the entire work, at which time the music’s internal logic makes clear the relationship.” “A conversation with you is most invigorating, Russell.”
― Laurie R. King, The Beekeeper's Apprentice

“That’s what tears are for, you know, to wash away the fear and cool the hate.”
― Laurie R. King, The Beekeeper's Apprentice

“I did not think of myself as a detective; I was a student of theology, and I was to spend my life in exploration, not of the darker crannies of human misbehaviour, but of the heights of human speculation concerning the nature of the Divine. That the two were not unrelated did not occur to me for years.”
― Laurie R. King, The Beekeeper's Apprentice

“Youth does not inspire confidence, in life or in stories,”
― Laurie R. King, The Beekeeper's Apprentice

“Madam, there is no treachery in the truth. There may be pain, but to face honestly all possible conclusions formed by a set of facts is the noblest route possible for a human being.” Holmes could be surprisingly empathetic at times,”
― Laurie R. King, The Beekeeper's Apprentice

“THE END OF a case is always long, tedious, and anticlimactic,”
― Laurie R. King, The Beekeeper's Apprentice

“Madam, there is no treachery in the truth. There may be pain, but to face honestly all possible conclusions formed by a set of facts is the noblest route possible for a human being.”
― Laurie R. King, The Beekeeper's Apprentice

“First and foremost a pragmatist, he had no time for the interference of unnecessary standards.”
― Laurie R. King, The Beekeeper's Apprentice

“To continue with the analogy, my perspective, my brush technique, my use of colour and shade, are all entirely different from his. The subject is essentially the same; it is the eyes and the hands of the artist that change.”
― Laurie R. King, The Beekeeper's Apprentice

“[Hugh] winced as I squealed the tyres, but after all, it wasn't his motorcar. Holmes did more than wince before we were out of Oxford, but I didn't hit anybody, and only brushed the farm cart slightly. It wasn't his automobile either, and what do men know about driving?”
― Laurie R. King, The Beekeeper's Apprentice