“Nobody believes in magicians any more, nobody believes that anyone can come along and wave a wand and turn you into a frog. But if you read in the paper that by injecting certain glands scientists can alter your vital tissues and you'll develop froglike characteristics, well, everybody would believe that.”
“You think he is marrying her for money?'
'Yes, I do. Don't you think so?'
'I should say quite certainly,' said Miss Marple. 'Like young Ellis who married Marion Bates, the rich ironmonger's daughter. She was a very plain girl and absolutely besotted about him. However, it turned out quite well. People like young Ellis and this Gerald Wright are only really disagreeable when they've married a poor girl for love. They are so annoyed with themselves for doing it that they take it out of the girl. But if they marry a rich girl they continue to respect her.”
“That gimcrack little desk, probably sham antique Louis XIV. She had said something to him once about there being a secret drawer in it. Secret drawer! That would not fool the police long.”
“I had a lovely childhood in Ireland, riding, hunting, and a great big, bare, draughty house with lots and lots of sun in it. If you’ve had a happy childhood, nobody can take that away from you, can they? It was afterwards—when I grew up—that things seemed always to go wrong.”
“Women were all the same. They promised to burn things and then didn’t.”
“Natural affection is one thing,” said Miss Ramsbottom, “and I hope I’ve got as much of it as anyone. But I won’t stand for wickedness. Wickedness has to be destroyed.”
“I should hardly advise you to go too much by all I’ve told you. I’m a malicious creature.”
“Yew berries?” “Berries or leaves. Highly poisonous. Taxine, of course, is the alkaloid.”
“He doesn’t seem to have been one of those food faddists who’ll eat any mortal thing so long as it isn’t cooked. My sister’s husband’s like that. Raw carrots, raw peas, raw turnips. But”
“The typists might have been so many blackbeetles.”
“It’s a classic, isn’t it, sir?” said Hay. “Third Programme stuff. I don’t listen to the Third Programme.”
“In midair, dangling lost above the world.”
“I'm a kind of paranoiac in reverse. I suspect people of plotting to make me happy.”
“What are you doing here?" she asked as she slowed from a jog to a walk and placed her hands on her hips. It would take her a few minutes to get her breathing back to normal. Longer if he kept smiling at her like that.
He shrugged. "I couldn't sleep. What about you?"
She opted for the obvious and filled her voice with as much sarcasm as she could. "I live here, actually”
“It is the fate of most men who mingle with the world, and attain even the prime of life, to make many real friends, and lose them in the course of nature. It is the fate of all authors or chroniclers to create imaginary friends, and lose them in the course of art. Nor is this the full extent of their misfortunes; for they are required to furnish an account of them besides.”
“A lie would have no sense unless the truth were felt as dangerous.”
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