The Weed That Strings the Hangman's Bag

I am often thought of as being remarkably bright, and yet my brains, more often than not, are busily devising new and interesting ways of bringing my enemies to sudden, gagging, writhing, agonizing death.

If you remember nothing else, remember this: Inspiration from outside one's self is like the heat in an oven. It makes passable Bath buns. But inspiration from within is like a volcano: It changes the face of the world.

You are unreliable, Flavia,' he said. 'Utterly unreliable.' Of course I was! It was one of the things I loved most about myself.

There's a lot to be said for being alone. But you and I know, don't we, Flavia, that being alone and being lonely are not at all the same thing?

I felt a pang -- a strange and inexplicable pang that I had never felt before. It was homesickness. Now, even more than I had earlier when I'd first glimpsed it, I longed to be transported into that quiet little landscape, to walk up the path, to take a key from my pocket and open the cottage door, to sit down by the fireplace, to wrap my arms around myself, and to stay there forever and ever.

Seen from the air, the male mind must look rather like the canals of Europe, with ideas being towed along well-worn towpaths by heavy-footed dray horses. There is never any doubt that they will, despite wind and weather, reach their destinations by following a simple series of connected lines. But the female mind, even in my limited experience, seems more of a vast and teeming swamp, but a swamp that knows in an instant whenever a stranger--even miles away--has so much as dipped a single toe into her waters. People who talk about this phenomenon, most of whom know nothing whatsoever about it, call it "woman's intuition.

To be most effective, flattery is always best applied with a trowel.

Experience has taught me that an expected answer is often better than the truth.

Sanctified cyanide Super-quick arsenic Higgledy-piggledy Into the Soup. Put out the mourning lamps Call for coffin clamps Teach them to trifle with Flavia de Luce!

Horehound sticks are meant to be shared with friends, don't you think?' She was dead wrong about that: Horehound sticks were meant to be gobbled down in solitary gluttony, and preferably in a locked room, but I didn't dare say so.

I have to admit, though, that Cynthia was a great organizer, but then, so were the men with whips who got the pyramids built.

I'm at that age where I watch such things with two minds, one that cackles at these capers and another that never gets much beyond a rather jaded and self-conscious smile, like the Mona Lisa.

If you need me, I shall be weeping at the bottom of my wardrobe.

Cheese!" I exclaimed. It was a secret prayer, whose meaning was known only to God and to me.

I remembered that Beethoven's symphonies had sometimes been given names... they should have call [the Fifth] the Vampire, because it simply refused to lie down and die.

While you've been gadding about the countryside, we've held a meeting, and we've all of us decided that you must go.' In short, we've voted you out of the family,' Daffy said. 'It was unanimous.

This was an interesting thought; it had never occurred to me that one's name could be a compass.

How curious it was, [...], that we humans had taken millions of year to crawl up out of the swamps and yet, within minutes of death, we were already tobogganing back down the slope.

I drew in a deep breath, sucking the sour tange into my lungs and savoring the chemical smell of decay. But this was no time for pleasant reflections.

Diamonds were nothing more than carbon, but carbon in a crystal lattice that made it the hardest known mineral in nature. That was the way we all were headed. I was sure of it. We were destined to be diamonds! How exciting it was to think that, long after the world had ended, whatever was left of our bodies would be transformed into a dazzling blizzard of diamond dust, blowing out towards eternity in the red glow of a dying sun.

Sometimes I hated myself but not for long.

You must never be deflected by unpleasantness. I want you to remember that. Although it may not be apparent to others, your duty will become as clear to you as if it were a white line painted down the middle of the road. You must follow it, Flavia.

Mother Goose! I have never much cared for flippant remarks, especially when others make them, and in particular, I don't give a frog's fundament for them when they come from an adult.

But what he said was true enough: I had recently destroyed a perfectly good set of wire braces by straightening them to pick a lock. Father had grumbled, of course, but had made another appointment to have me netted and dragged back up to London, to that third-floor ironmonger's shop in Farringdon Street, where I would be strapped to a board like Boris Karloff as various bits of ironmongery were shoved into my mouth, screwed in, and bolted to my gums.

...and I realized not without a sinking feeling that he was already completely in Feely’s thrall, hanging on her every word like ball on a rubber string, nodding like a demented woodpecker, and grinning like a fool.

Being alone,” I snapped, without meaning to be intentionally rude. I was simply being truthful. “Being alone,” she said, nodding. I could see that she was not put off by my bristling reply. “There’s a lot to be said for being alone. But you and I know, don’t we, Flavia, that being alone and being lonely are not at all the same thing?” I brightened a bit. Here was someone who seemed at least to have thought through some of the same things I had.

One could always be helpful, I reminded myself, without spilling one's guts.

If God meant for pictures to be sent through the air He’d have never would have given us cinema. Or the national gallery.

one’s innate desire for escape.’ Everyone needs to escape, don’t they? In one way or another, I mean.