Alan Bradley

"- J'aime les livres où il pleut sans arrêt, m'avait-elle un jour confié. C'est tellement réaliste"

Avec Dogger, parler à n'en plus finir était superflu. Nous échangeâmes un regard qui se passait de mots. Nous avions embarqué dans le même train de pensées et hormis le triste décès de Phyllis Wyvern, tout allait bien dans le meilleur des mondes.

_Oh non! Il ne faut pas lui demander ça. Les spectacles de charité sont sa bête noire: elle ne veut pas en entendre parler. Un incident dans son enfance, je crois.Vous feriez mieux de le prévenir avant qu'il n'aborde le sujet. Sinon on aura droit à une scène de tous les diables!

Nous le savions tous: il y avait des périodes où Buckshaw n'était accessible qu'à pied.

Père insistait toujours sur le fait que le premier repas de la journée était le "festin du corps", et pour autant que je sache, rien au monde ne pouvait le contraindre à rater ce moment.

Le Père Noël, c'était pour les enfants, m'avaient -elles répété.
- C'est une blague sadique perpétrée par les parents qui veulent couvrir leurs affreux rejetons de cadeaux tout en évitant le contact physique, avait insisté Daffy l'an dernier. C'est un mythe. Tu peux me croire. Après tout, je suis plus âgée que toi. Je sais ces choses-là.

"Confrontation is a cannon," he had said. "It's a powerful weapon, but it gives away your position."

The library was probably the only room at Miss Bodycote's where one could be alone without being accused of being up to no good.

"I wonder if you might spare me a few minutes. It's rather a personal matter?"
I was proud of my strategy. (...) Who can say no to a personal matter? Even God is curious about such things, which is why He listens to our prayers.

But there was no point in feeling sorry for myself. It is always better, and far more rewarding, I have observed, to have someone else feel sorry for you, than to do the job yourself.

"Come on, kid"? My ears couldn't believe what my mouth was saying. A couple of hours in Canada and I was already talking like Humphrey Bogart.

A pillar of strength, Daffy had once remarked, was a nice way of saying someone was terminally bossy (...)

I must be honest about the fact that I'm made extremely uneasy by excessive noise, and that I do not care for shouted instructions. If I'd been meant to be a sheep, I reasoned, I'd have been born with wool instead of skin.

There is no one, anywhere, on the planet who can refuse a request for advice, and I had meant to take full advantage of that fact.

I would never have thought it possible, but I missed my sister. She had been the lemon on my fish, the vinegar on my chips, I realized with a sudden pang, and that without her, life from now on was going to be less tasty.

There is a mystery in silence that can never be matched by mere words.

As I have said, I hate being the center of attention, and yet at the same time I can't tolerate being ignored.

I said nothing. I have learned to use silence as a Jimmy to pry information free.

And yet there was an indescribable sadness about this dream: the kind of sadness that comes when the heart and the brain do not agree.

Generally, when you discover a body, you have the luxury of close examination before the police are called in to trample the scene like cows at a picnic.