Quotes from Simon Brett

The only situation which might justify panic is one in which panic is likely to help. Such a situation never arises. Though pretended panic may sometimes cause a useful diversion, real panic can never be anything other than a waste of energy.

Like many other Catholics, Esmond had a crust of Catholic complacency over a thin layer of doubt, which spanned a deep morass of sheer terror.

Still, Mrs Pargeter reflected, you didn't have to be very intelligent to be a solicitor. Just somehow scrape through a few exams in your twenties and then the British legal system saw to it that you had a meal ticket for life.

Though a little inevitable commingling occurred for the purposes of procreation, recreational sex was generally outsourced.

She remembered her late husband's precepts about the police. What they did not know, generally speaking, they did not need to know. Ignorance in the Police Force, he had always maintained, was a natural state, and who are we, he would ask with a disarming shrug of his shoulders, to interfere with nature?

No," Jude agreed softly, "but we can empathize. Anyone who's been in a relationship where one partner blames the other for their own inadequacies knows the kind of pain involved. Strange how it keeps happening. There are enough unpleasant people out there in the world to cut you down to size. What everyone needs at home is someone to support and bolster them.

Mrs Pargeter reflected, not for the first time, that there is within the human psyche an infinite yearning for humiliation.

The only normal people are the ones you don't know very well.' Joe Ancis

But, goodness me, poor Theresa! What a dreadful thing to happen in Smithy's Loam!' 'Or anywhere,' Mrs Pargeter observed mildly.

But, goodness me, poor Theresa! What a dreadful thing to happen in Smithy's Loam!' 'Or anywhere,' Mrs Pargeter observed mildly. She knew that its residents tended to see Smithy's Loam as the centre of the universe, but murder did remain a relatively offensive crime even in other parts of the world.

Why was it, Mrs Pargeter mused, that the only people who said they were the last ones to spread gossip were always such arrant gossip-mongers?

doing well at the things she wants to do well at.

I did have to resist the urge to open his bedroom door and check that he was all right. Old habits of motherhood die hard.

Indeed the fact that Lord Lucan continued to work without harassment as a publican in Dorking was a tribute to the expertise of Jack the Knife.

I checked my make-up in the mirror. I don't wear a lot, but if you're dealing with people all day, you've got to look presentable.

Horror can only be borne if one ceases to think of the individual identity of those involved;

Since Mrs Pargeter had always favoured pulling bushes up by the roots rather than beating about them, she again asked directly what his problem was or who was making his life difficult

Mrs Pargeter had that rare quality in any surroundings of being always conspicuous, but never out of place.

I can't think when I was last surprised by anything I did. No, I'll get my own thing going, I don't know, I'll . . .' He returned to his drink. Maybe he could have finished the sentence, but Charles had a feeling that there was nothing more to add. Mark only wanted the negative benefit of escape; he had no positive thoughts of where he could escape to. Time

This meant that on the relevant nights Colonel Wicksteed and Mr Dawlish would not miss any of their favourite programme, Coronation Street. (This the two of them, neither of whom had ever in their lives travelled north of Cheltenham, watched with the fascinated bewilderment many people accord to Science Fiction.)

Someone once said that experience is a comb that life gives you when you've lost your hair.

Why is it that animals instantly recognize the human beings who find them most repellent, and immediately focus all their attention on those poor unfortunates?