“...silence is sometimes the most costly of commodities.”

“You see, Flavia, silence is sometimes the most costly of commodities.”

“Even in complete silence, Buckshaw had its own unique silence; a silence I would recognize anywhere. ”

“I lay for a long time in silence, staring at the ceiling. Was my life always to be like this? I wondered. Was it going to go, forever, in an instant, from sunshine to shadow? From pandemonium to loneliness? From fierce anger to a fiercer kind of love?”

“To be most effective, flattery is always best applied with a trowel.”

“I remembered that Beethoven's symphonies had sometimes been given names... they should have call [the Fifth] the Vampire, because it simply refused to lie down and die.”

“You must have loved her awfully," I said, realizing even as I spoke that I made it sound as if Fenella were already dead. "Yes, sometimes very much," Porcelain said reflectively, "-and sometimes not at all." She must have seen my startled reaction. "Love's not some big river that flows on and on forever, and if you believe it is, you're a bloody fool. It can be dammed up until nothing's left but a trickle..." "Or stopped completely, I added.”