Home > Work > The Watchmaker of Filigree Street (The Watchmaker of Filigree Street, #1)
1 " What's that?' Thaniel said, curious. The postmarks and stamps weren't English or Japanese.'A painting. There's a depressed Dutchman who does countryside scenes and flowers and things. It's ugly, but I have to maintain the estates in Japan and modern art is a good investment. "
― Natasha Pulley , The Watchmaker of Filigree Street (The Watchmaker of Filigree Street, #1)
2 " Mori made an unwilling sound. 'I don't like Western art.''No look at this.' He lifted it from its package. It wasn't heavy. 'It's clever, it looks like busy Mozart.''What?''I . . .' Thaniel sighed. 'I see sound. Mozart looks like this. You know. Fast strings.''See? In front of you?''Yes. I'm not mad.''I didn't think so. All sounds?''Yes. "
3 " I'm a Buddhist. You might have a Christian obligation to catch pneumonia while you sit for two and a half hours listening to some twerp in a dress drone on about the virtue of wedded life but, dear as you are to me, I don't. "
4 " Six saw a caterpillar.''What kind?''Green, with purple and white zigzags.''I see,' Thaniel said slowly. Liking children did not keep him from being perplexed by them. He was recently too old to remember his own childhood with any clarity. 'I imagine that was exciting?'She glanced up at him warily. 'No. It was just a caterpillar. "
5 " The creeping sense that he might have seen him reading the book came up from the ground, but that was more anxiety than evidence. "
6 " Everybody, professors and students and Proctors the same, knew that if the sign said 'do not walk on the grass', one hopped. Anybody who didn't had failed to understand what Oxford was. "
7 " Loyalty is a continuous phenomenon, you don't score points for past action, "
8 " Mori looked across and was, briefly, a languageless, inhuman thing rescued from the sea and asked for an impious favour. "
9 " It is not summer, England doesn't have summer, it has continuous autumn with a fortnight's variation here and there. "
10 " Think of horse races. People like to bet on the one with three legs and a wheeze.They don't bet on that one because they think it will win, but because they can see how very glorious it would be if it were to win "
11 " Being solitary isn't a disease that needs a cure. "
12 " I'll give you a cake if you get him in the stream by the end of the afternoon,' Mori said to Six.'Hold on,' Thaniel said. 'No making criminals of the orphans, Fagin.''But I want some cake,' Six frowned. 'And his name isn't Fagin. "
13 " The safest way to success is to write according to the capacity of the stupidest member of the audience. "
14 " Under the gas lamps, mist pawed at the windows of the closed shops, which became steadily shabbier nearer home. It was such a smooth ruination that he could have been walking forward through time, watching the same buildings age five years with every step, all still as a museum "
15 " He was not poor - he could afford ten candles & two baths a week. He wasn't going to throw himself in the Thames for the misery of it all and God knew most of London was worse off. All the same, he had a feeling life should not have been about ten candles and two baths a week. "
16 " Nobody wants a house in Osaka,' he said, and it was strange to hear him switch suddenly to foreign pronunciation in the middle of his English. 'It would mean you had to live in Osaka.''What's wrong with it?' 'It's like . . . Birmingham. "
17 " Is it white wine? Red tastes like vinegar.''Of course it's white wine, I'm Japanese. "
18 " I'll never understand. Advanced physics is about describing things you can't know intuitively, so you describe it in numbers, but I've got it in front of me." He was looking around the room rather than at her. He seemed to like it, and since coming in, had eased closer to the burners. "It's like listening to blind people with no sense of touch prove atom by atom the existence and possible features of an elephant when I'm not even very interested in elephants. "
19 " In Japan, first names are only for who you're married to, or if you're being rude,' the watchmaker explained. "
20 " Mori smiled properly. The lines around his eyes were deeper than usual now. They made him look like an old photograph of a young man, often crushed, but ironed carefully so that only the ghosts of the marks remained. "
