Quotes from Josephine Tey

Had their physical attractions proved insufficient because she had unconsciously asked more from them than they were able to give?

Ever seen the old conjurer's trick of a lady sawn in half? There's a strong aroma of sawn lady about this...don't you smell it?

The more windows on the world a policeman has the better he is likely to be at his job

Silas's last book: mother lying-in with her eleventh upstairs, father laid-out after his ninth downstairs, eldest son lying to the Government in the cow-shed, eldest daughter lying with her lover in the hayloft, everyone else lying low in the barn. The rain dripped from the thatch, and the manure steamed in the midden. Silas never omitted the manure.

There is a limit to one's capacity for rows, you know. There comes a time when you're only too ready to sacrifice something for a quiet life.

She was afraid of what she called the young man's "personableness." She distrusted it for itself, and hated it as a potential threat to her house.

But it was never possible to forget that Searle was in a room. Why? she kept asking herself. Or rather, why not?

For Liz, all American men were divided into two classes: those who treated you as if you were a frail old lady, and those who treated you as if you were just frail.

The stars merely reduce one to the status of an amoeba. The stars take the last vestige of human pride, the last spark of confidence, from one.

The sullen late-July days would break suddenly into shrieking tempest, in the black heart of which they would struggle with halliards that seemed to have an evil and furious life of their own; or they would be beaten to the deck by a solid weight of rain that was like the emptying of buckets. It was not rain at all, as the term is understood. The skies just turned to water and fell down.

One would expect boredom to be a great yawning emotion, but it isn't, of course. It's a small niggling thing.

And Hopkins, seeing that Tisdall was unaware of Grant's identity, rushed in with glad maliciousness. "That is Scotland Yard," he said. "Inspector Grant. Never had an unsolved crime to his name." "I hope you write my obituary," Grant said. "I hope I do!" the journalist said, with fervor.

You have the most priceless of all attributes for your job, and that is flair. But don't let it ride you, Grant. Don't let your imagination take hold. Keep it your servant.

But it seemed that that would spoil the symmetry of the room, and in hospitals symmetry ranked just a short head behind cleanliness and a whole length in front of Godliness.

So Grant betook himself through the sunny, busy morning to Waterloo, trailing a little cloud of discontent behind him as he went. As he stepped from the warm pavement into the cool vault of the best but saddest of all London stations—the very name of it reeks of endings and partings—gloom sat on his face like a portent.

Brightling Crescent was a terrace of red-brick three-story houses of the Nottingham lace and pot-plant type of decoration. Their stone steps were coaxed into cleanliness and hideousness by liberal applications of coloured pipeclay. Some blushed at finding themselves so conspicuous, some were evidently jaundiced by the unwelcome attention, and some stared in pallid horror as at an outrage. But all of them wore that Nemo me impune lacessit air.

but you have been in my hair for the last fourteen days, and I shall be very glad to get you out.

The only thing that counted to her was her own opinion of herself. If that became smirched or spoiled there would be nothing left.   And

perhaps a series of small satisfactions scattered like sequins over the texture of everyday life was of greater worth than the academic satisfaction of owning a collection of fine objects at the back of a drawer. When

The fun had been so bland, so lightly handled, that its essential quality, its ruthlessness, had not been apparent.

Pretty soon both the air and the roads would be so full that no one could move in comfort and everyone would have to go back to the railways for quick travel. Progress, that was.

There was no doubt that being a little on the plump side kept the lines away; if you had to have a face like a scone it was at least comforting that it was a smooth scone.

The point is that every single man who was there knows that the story is nonsense, and yet it has never been contradicted. It will never be overtaken now. It is a completely untrue story grown to legend while the men who knew it to be untrue looked on and said nothing.

One of the secrets of a successful life is to know how to be a little profitably crazy.