Thrice the Brinded Cat Hath Mew'd

You can learn from a glance at anyone's library, not what they are, but what they wish to be.

I do not encourage early morning chirpiness, even in those whom I know and love. It is generally a sign of a sloppy mind, and is not to be encouraged.

I have always found there to be a certain sadness about mirrors, since they double the space in a house which needs to be filled with love.

True charity, I had discovered, consists in swallowing an invisible flaming sword.

Dreamless nights, I knew, can be the most troubling, since you come back not knowing where you've been or what you've done.

It's amazing what the discovery of a corpse can do for one's spirits.

Growing up is like that, I suppose. The strings fall away and you're left standing on your own.

Giving someone the benefit of the doubt is not so simple as it sounds. What it means, in fact, is being charitable--which, as the vicar is fond of pointing out, is the most difficult of the graces to master. Faith and hope are a piece of cake but charity is a Pandora's box: the monster in the cistern which, when the lid is opened, comes swarming out to seize you by the throat.

. . . and there was for a moment an unbreakable bond between us: the eternal bond of chemistry. I glowed with all the fire of a newborn galaxy.

Love is love, wherever you may find it—even when it's covered in feathers.

I want to know who I am before it is too late—before I am no longer the same person—before I become someone different. Although there are days when this seems a furious race against time, there are others when it seems to matter not a tinker's curse.

The first step in gaining the upper hand is always to seize the moral high ground, and to be able to do this with no more than a single word is nothing short of genius.

As anybody with two older sisters can tell you, a closed door is like a red rag to a bull. It cannot go unchallenged.

How could I tell Clarence that finding another dead body was anything but dreadful? On the contrary: it was thrilling; it was exciting; it was exhilarating, it was invigorating; to say nothing of electrifying and above all, satisfying. How could I tell the dear man that murder made me feel so gloriously alive?

Playing the clown is not an easy task. Clowns, I have come to believe, are placed upon the earth solely to fill the needs of others, while running perilously close to “Empty” themselves.

People who turn pages with licked fingers are as bad as those who wipe their noses on the table linen

He gave me the kind of skeptical look that I expect to get from Saint Peter on judgement day.

There is a certain type of person to whom a closed door is a challenge—a dare, a taunt, a glove thrown down—and I am one of them. A closed door is more than a mystery to be solved: It's an insult. A slap in the face.

Poise was keeping your knees and your lips together, your eyebrows and your nostrils apart.

It is not the dead who are to be feared, I thought, but rather the living. Only the living can cast you down among the dead.

I firmly believe it is by sharing such stupid moments as these that we grow into someone other than who we used to be, and I was already feeling an inch taller.

Mr. Sambridge possessed a remarkably good mouthful of natural teeth for someone his age, whether ritually maintained or expensively corrected I could not tell. As someone who has spent hours of agony strapped down in Dr. Frankenstein's chamber of dental horrors in Farrington Street, I could only respect—and hate—anyone who still possessed such a spotless set of choppers.

Although Fate loves coincidences, it does not chew its cabbage twice.

I feel better in the rain. It was true. The human brain performs more efficiently when taking in humid air than it does in hot or cold dry weather. My theory is that this is some kind of throwback to our fishy ancestors that lived in the sea and green water. And someday, when I have sufficient time, I intend to write a paper upon the subject.

It’s amazing what the discovery of a corpse can do for one’s spirit.

Her frustration, I knew, was not particularly with us, but with the fact that Father was in hospital and beyond her sphere of influence; beyond her need to advise and counsel. Pretended anger was Mrs. Mullet’s way of weeping.

She always said she'd prefer to die on her way to the moon than under a runaway bus.

Boy Scouts were famous from pole to pole as being able to whittle up, upon demand, anything from a toothpick to a cantilever bridge.

The love between animal and human is one that never fails, as it does so often among our own sorry tribe.