Home > Work > The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie (Flavia de Luce, #1)
61 " Any barrier, I had learned--even a potential one--was best breached by pretending urgency. "
― Alan Bradley , The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie (Flavia de Luce, #1)
62 " A boy is content to be made into a civil man by caning, or any one of a number of other stratagems, but a girl, being disqualified by Nature, as it were, from such physical brutality, must remain forever something of a terra incognita. Don’t you think? "
63 " That's him!" he said. "That's the one!" "Is it, indeed?" Inspector Hewitt asked, as he lifted the cap from my head and took the gown from my shoulders with the gentle deference of a valet. The little man's pale blue eyes bulged visibly in their sockets. "Why, it's only a girl!" he said. I could have slapped his face. "
64 " Heaven must be a place where the library is open twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. No … eight days a week. "
65 " being Flavia de Luce was like being a sublimate: like the black crystal residue that is left on the cold glass of a test tube by the violet fumes of iodine. "
66 " The panel on the right portrayed Jesus emerging from his tomb, as Mary Magdalene, in a red dress (also iron, or perhaps grated particles of gold), holds out to him a purple garment (manganese dioxide) and a loaf of yellow bread (silver chloride). "
67 " Like most, I was a solitary boy at first, keeping to my books and weeping in the hedgerows whenever I could get away on my own. Surely, I thought, I must be the saddest child in the world; that there must be something innately horrid about me to cause my father to cast me off so heartlessly. I believed that if I could discover what it was, there might be a chance of putting things right, of somehow making it up to him. "
68 " And it was signed simply “George. "
69 " Toccata by Pietro Domenico Paradisi—the one from his Sonata in A Major—come tripping out to meet me. The Toccata was my favorite composition; to my mind it was the greatest musical accomplishment in the entire history of the world, but I knew that if Ophelia found that out, "
70 " (The doorbell rang) ... I knew that Feely and Daffy would never condescend to respond to a bell ("So utterly Pavlovian," Feely said) ... Keep warm feet and a cool head, and you'll never find yourself sneezing in bed. "
71 " Was the pie good, luv?" she asked. I'd forgotten the pie until that moment. I took a leaf from Dr. Darby's notebook. "Um," I said. "
72 " And Miss Ophelia?" he asked, getting round to her at last. "Miss Ophelia? Well, to tell you the truth, Ned, we're all rather worried about her." Ned recoiled as if a wasp had gone up his nose. "Oh? What's the trouble? Nothing serious, I hope." "She's gone all green," I said. "I think it's chlorosis. Dr. Darby thinks so too. "
73 " I had learned that a lie wrapped in detail, like a horse pill in an apple, went down with greater ease. "
74 " Inspector Hewitt flicked on the defroster to evaporate the condensation our words were forming on the windscreen. "
75 " Poor Dogger! That's what I thought, even though Daphne told me I should never say that about anyone: "It's not only condescending, it fails to take into account the future," she said. "
76 " You're certain about that?""I'm quite competent with the chlorinated hydrocarbons, thank you. "
77 " Heaven must be a place where the library is open twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. "
78 " Ned stuck out his calloused fingers and gave my hand a surprisingly gentle shake. It was like shaking hands with a pineapple. "
79 " A long hallway, hung profusely with dark, water-stained sporting prints, served as a lobby, in which centuries of sacrificed kippers had left the smell of their smoky souls clinging to the wallpaper. Only the patch of sunshine visible through the open front door relieved the gloom "
80 " It’s a fact of life that a girl can tell in a flash if another girl likes her. "