Dorothy L. Sayers

"Books... are like lobster shells, we surround ourselves with 'em, then we grow out of 'em and leave 'em behind, as evidence of our earlier stages of development."

"A man once asked me ... how I managed in my books to write such natural conversation between men when they were by themselves. Was I, by any chance, a member of a large, mixed family with a lot of male friends? I replied that, on the contrary, I was an only child and had practically never seen or spoken to any men of my own age till I was about twenty-five. Well, said the man, I shouldn't have expected a woman (meaning me) to have been able to make it so convincing. I replied that I had coped with this difficult problem by making my men talk, as far as possible, like ordinary human beings. This aspect of the matter seemed to surprise the other speaker; he said no more, but took it away to chew it over. One of these days it may quite likely occur to him that women, as well as men, when left to themselves, talk very much like human beings also."

"Miss Climpson, said Lord Peter, is a manifestation of the wasteful way in which this country is run. Look at electricity, Look at water-power. Look at the tides. Look at the sun. Millions of power units being given off into space every minute. Thousands of old maids, simply bursting with useful energy, forced by our stupid social system into hydros and hotels and communities and hostels and posts as companions, where their magnificent gossip-powers and units of inquisitiveness are allowed to dissipate themselves or even become harmful to the community, while the ratepayers' money is spent on getting work for which these women are providentially fitted, inefficiently carried out by ill-equipped policemen like you."

"It is extraordinarily entertaining to watch the historians of the past ... entangling themselves in what they were pleased to call the problem of Queen Elizabeth. They invented the most complicated and astonishing reasons both for her success as a sovereign and for her tortuous matrimonial policy. She was the tool of Burleigh, she was the tool of Leicester, she was the fool of Essex; she was diseased, she was deformed, she was a man in disguise. She was a mystery, and must have some extraordinary solution. Only recently has it occrurred to a few enlightened people that the solution might be quite simple after all. She might be one of the rare people were born into the right job and put that job first."

"Every time a man expects, as he says, his money to work for him, he is expecting other people to work for him."

"Lawyers enjoy a little mystery, you know. Why, if everybody came forward and told the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth straight out, we should all retire to the workhouse."

"The great advantage about telling the truth is that nobody ever believes it."

"Death seems to provide the minds of the Anglo-Saxon race with a greater fund of amusement than any other single subject."

"I love you - I am at rest with you - I have come home."

"The only sin passion can commit is to be joyless."

"Every woman is a human being-one cannot repeat that too often-and a human being must have occupation if he or she is not to become a nuisance to the world."

"Time and trouble will tame an advanced young woman. But an advanced old woman is uncontrollable by any force."

"The worst sin-perhaps the only sin- passion can commit is to be joyless."

"You cannot do good work if you take your mind off the work to see how the community is taking it."

"What we make is more important than what we are particularly if making is our profession."

"Trouble shared is trouble halved."

"A continued atmosphere of hectic passion is very trying if you haven't got any of your own."

"People who make some other person part of their job are dangerous."

"In the world it is called Tolerance, but in hell it is called Despair...the sin that believes in nothing, cares for nothing, seeks to know nothing, interferes with nothing, enjoys nothing, hates nothing, finds purpose in nothing, lives for nothing, and remains alive because there is nothing for which it will die."

"Facts are like cows. If you look them in the face long enough, they generally run away."