"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?"
- Alan Bradley
"As Daffy once said, the best place to hide a glum countenance is onstage at the opera."
"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 elec..."
"It's amazing what the discovery of a corpse can do for one's spirits."
"The first thing they would do would be to open my mouth and extract the soggy ball of my handkerchief, and as they spread it out flat on the table beside my white remains, an orange stamp—a stamp belo..."
"...silence is sometimes the most costly of commodities."
"There are choices in life which you are aware, even as you make them, cannot be undone; choices after which, once made, things will never be the same.There is that moment when you can still walk away,..."
"…because I was only eleven years old, I was wrapped in the best cloak of invisibility in the world."
"When you're that age, you sometimes have a great enthusiasm that is very deep and very narrow, and that is something that has always intrigued me-- that world of the eleven-year-old that is so quickly..."
"The press was ruthless, but then so was the church.Flavia de Luce"