Quotes from Ngaio Marsh

Well, ain't you the clam's cuticle!" said Mr. Ogden.

What do you think, Mr Alleyn? If there's another war will the young chaps come at it, same as we did, thinking it's great? And get the same jolt? What do you reckon? I'm afraid to speculate, said Alleyn.

weather forecast that it was going to be rough and had taken a pill. Miss Abbott was tramping up and down the narrow lower deck, having, perhaps instinctively, hit upon that part of the ship which after the first few hours is deserted by almost everyone. In the plan shown to passengers it was called the promenade deck. It was Jemima who first noticed the break in the weather. A kind of thin warmth fell across the page of her book;

I always make a point of keeping the most pleasant-sounding name for the murderer. As he or she is bound to come to an unpleasant end, it seems the very least the author can do.

No art should be fashionable.

One should have the courage of one's loneliness.

As for Mr. Ogden, he would have broken out immediately into a long discourse in which the words "uplift," "renooal," and "spiritual regeneration" would have sounded again and again, for Mr. Ogden was so like an American as to be quite fabulous.

It's so unreal and beastly.' 'Murder is beastly. Unfortunately it's not unreal.

It was as though they had so saturated themselves with professional behaviourism that they had lost the knack of being natural.

Quis, quid, ubi, quibus auxiliis, cur, quomodo, quando?

What was the crime, who did it, when was it done, and where? How done, and with what motive, who in the deed did share?

It's a curious thing that when one speaks from the heart it is invariably in the worst of taste.

With corpses stiffening on the premises, sir, all things be possible to a man with a desperate powerful idea egging him on.

The clocks in the hotel, and the clocks outside in the town, all began to strike six as he got into bed, and when the last clock had struck, the vague rumour of innumerable cockcrows rang in his head. And as he fell asleep he heard the first chatter of waking birds.

Ah," said Dr. Hart, "this is a pet theory of my own. The actual 'he' is known to nobody." "Does the actual 'he' even exist?" Jonathan returned. "May it not be argued that 'he' has no intrinsic reality since different selfs arise out of a conglomeration of selfs to meet different events?

People," he said, "talk about eyes and mouths as if they had something to do with the way other people think and behave. Only bits of the body, aren't they? Like navels and knees and toenails. Arrangements.

They were fortified with all the resilience that youth presents to an emotional shock. In the midst of murder and attempted suicide, they had managed, not only to behave with address and good sense, but all to fall in love with each other.

It was singular. It was damned odd. He must have touched a letter under her pillow because when he straightened up

Beneath it hung a faded photograph in an Oxford frame. It presented a Victorian gentleman wearing an ineffable air of hauteur and a costume which suggested that he had begun to dress up as Mr. Sherlock Holmes but, suddenly losing interest, had gone out fishing instead.

the "Sonia Gluck as I knew her" gag?

Order me some of that delicious-looking lager those people are drinking and I'll reveal everything,' said Angela.

They do a certain amount of mischief, they're an almighty nuisance, but as murderers I've no real faith in the British anarchist.

He's the boss, after all," Troy thought as he left on his wife's arm.

What I'd like is a case. You know how it happens in these crime stories, chaps....I read a good many of them and it's always the same thing. The keen young P. C. happens to be on the spot when there's a homicide, His Super has to call in the Yard and before you know where you are the P. C.'s working with one of the Big Four and getting praised for his witty deductions.