“Either way, the whole thing was a pain in the porpoise.”

“I had found by experience that putting things down on paper helped to clear the mind in precisely the same way, as Mrs. Mullet had taught me, that an eggshell clarifies the consommé or the coffee, which, of course, is a simple matter of chemistry. The albumin contained in the eggshell has the property of collecting and binding the rubbish that floats in the dark liquid, which can then be removed and discarded in a single reeking clot: a perfect description of the writing process.”

“No point in wasting time with false vanity when you possess the real thing.”

“Apart from the soul, the brewing of tea is the only thing that sets us apart from the great apes.”

“Was sorrow, in the end, a private thing? A closed container? Something that, like a bucket of water, could be borne only on a single pair of shoulders?”

“You are unreliable, Flavia,' he said. 'Utterly unreliable.'Of course I was! It was one of the things I loved most about myself.”

“I am often thought of as being remarkably bright, and yet my brains, more often than not, are busily devising new and interesting ways of bringing my enemies to sudden, gagging, writhing, agonizing death.”