“I never trust the airlines from those countries where the pilots believe in the afterlife. You are safer when they don't.”

“Oh" she says "the inconceivable sorrow of it, those chairs piled up at night when you're sitting in a cafè. The last one left".”

“It is well, when in difficulties, to say never a word, neither black nor white. Speech is silver but silence is golden.”

“The word "education" comes from the root e from ex, out, and duco, I lead. It means a leading out. To me education is a leading out of what is already there in the pupil's soul.”

“It was a gusty day, and from the windows of Caroline's top-floor flat, only the sky was visible with its little hurrying clouds. It was a day when being indoors was meaningful, wasting an afternoon in superior confidences with a friend before the two-barred electric heater.”

“It's a whydunnit in q-sharp major and it has a message: never talk to the sort of girls that you wouldn't leave lying about in your drawing-room for the servants to pick up.”

“For those who like that sort of thing," said Miss Brodie in her best Edinburgh voice, "That is the sort of thing they like.”