Phryne Fisher Quotes

I'm concealing a lot of things. That's what a lady does.

Had she been at all used to blushing, she would have blushed, but she wasn't, so she didn't.

Phryne was getting out of the car. Dot closed her eyes. Miss Fisher was about to happen to someone again.

There are good sailors. Well, some good sailors. In a way they are ideal as husbands. They drop in every six months for a wild celebration, then they drop out again before one gets bored with their company or annoyed with by their habits.

Ice cream was reliable. Young men were not.

A young man in one’s hotel bedroom is capable of being explained, but a corpse is always a hindrance.

I have a theory that kitchens, once they reach a certain level of complexity, attract new gadgets into their orbit, like planets. Only this can account for the fact that I own two melon ballers.

... with all the sweetness of a chocolate-coated razor-blade.

He'd pull a door off its hinges rather than work out how to turn a key.

If you are not scared then there is no merit in being brave.

Her heart was beating appreciably faster, and she took more rapid breaths, but she was enjoying herself. Adventuresses are born, not made.

No cook can ignore the opinion of a man who asks for three helpings. One is politeness, two is hunger, but three is a true and cherished compliment.

She was sensible of the fact that while there were two sets of masculine arms to fall into, and one of them her current pet, Phryne had fallen into Dot’s.

First, a bath. I'm feeling soiled. Too much contact with cold reality, I think.

Phryne was feeling most displeased with a species to which, she reminded herself, she belonged.

She wondered, briefly, if she was beautiful, decided she was and blew a kiss to her reflection

I always like cases when the victim's been practically begging to be killed. It means I don't have to be sorry for him.

This is what 'forever' means, my dear. You don't walk into danger on your own. Not anymore.

Both had suggestive bulges in their pockets which told of either huge genitalia or trousered pistols.

The young will no longer be advised by the old," she said to the hall porter. "That is because we advised them to die," said the hall porter.

One only has a few fragrant nights of spring. Store your memories for when you are old. You will enjoy them again under such a moon as this.

In here, Phryne, is the nursery. Do you like babies? Phryne laughed. No, not at all. they are not aesthetic like a puppy or a kitten. In fact, they always look drunk to me. look at that one---you'd swear he had been hitting the gin.

Phryne looked at a large statue of St. Joseph, for whom she had always had an admiration. It can’t have been easy, managing a girl with an inexplicable pregnancy. But he had accepted the word of the Lord and not put her away. Later generations had not been so forgiving.

Come to the jacaranda tree at seven o'clock and you will hear something to your advantage. Destroy this note.' No signature, no clue to the identity. Just what sort of heroine do you think I am? Phryne asked the air. Only a Gothic novel protagonist would receive that and say, 'Goodness, let me just slip into a low-cut white nightie and put on the highest heeled shoes I can find,' and, pausing only to burn the note, slip out of the hotel by a back exit and go forth to meet her doom in the den of the monster - to be rescued in the nick of time by the strong-jawed hero (he of the Byronic profile and the muscles rippling beneath the torn shirt). 'Oh, my dear,' Phryne spoke aloud as if to the letter-writer. 'You don't know a lot about me, do you?

Dot had discovered in herself a keen interest in diligent research of nice calm paper records, which never wept or ran away or turned nasty.

I want to find the murderer too. I don’t like having my journeys interrupted by chloroform.

Never trust a man who bites the heads off chickens is probably a good sound rule of practice.

It was always easier to genuinely praise than to try and find something nice to say about rubbish.

It took determination to be really strange. That, or absinthe before breakfast every day.

Jane read her Anatomy, occasionally raising her eyes from a diagram to consider any human within sight in a dissecting sort of way which, Dot said, gave her the willies.

Lust was a reliable emotion, but greed was altogether simpler to satisfy and you got to keep your clothes on.

And they need not cause you grief. As my Highland grandmother said—and she had the Sight—“Tis not the dead ye have to be concerned about! Beware of the Living!” And she was a wise woman. The dead are beyond your help or mine, poor things. But the living need us. Thirty souls at the least, Phryne, are still on that island to praise God who might now be angels—or devils.

Dot wondered how she was to mention Phryne’s habit of strewing her boudoir with beautiful naked young men. She could not think of a method of introducing the subject and decided to leave it to Phryne to cope with.

Conversation is a minefield until you learn the conventions, Jane dear.’ ‘I’ll never learn all the rules,’ muttered Jane. ‘Yes, you will,’ said Phryne. ‘Then you can bend them. The best advice I would give you is, “If under attack, cause a diversion”.’ ‘A diversion?’ ‘Yes, trip over the dog, spill a glass of wine on your attacker, burst into song, challenge your attacker to a duel. And the angrier you get, the lower your voice should be. Never shout unless you are shouting “Fire!

His voice was heavy with Slavic fatalism.

This was cheering. The real world was still there, it still contained puppies being puppies and cats being cats.

She looked as plump and self-confident as the city pigeons outside, and as sure of her place.

platypuses irresistible proof that God likes a joke as much as anyone else. ‘A platypus is intrinsically much less likely than a unicorn or a sea serpent.

Miss? Miss Phryne? Are you all right?’ ‘Come in, Dot. I’m fine. Some son of unmarried parents just tried to kidnap me.’ ‘What did you do with the body, Miss?

We learn love from the people who love us.

Money can’t buy happiness but it can vastly improve the quality of your misery.

Even the reeking dark in the lion's cage seemed precious and infinitely preferable to whatever lay beyond. She would go out like the flame of a candle. Where does the candle flame go when the candle is blown out? She laid her painted face against the iron bars and bared her teeth at death.

Things accumulated in purses. Unless they were deliberately unloaded and all contents examined for utility occasionally, one could find oneself transporting around in one's daily life three lipstick cases with just a crumb of lipstick left, an old eyebrow pencil sharpener without a blade, pieces of defunct watch, odd earrings, handkerchiefs (three crumpled, one uncrumpled), two grubby powder puffs, bent hairpins, patterns of ribbon to be matched, a cigarette lighter without fuel (and two with fuel), a spark plug, some papers of Bex and a sprinkling of loose white aspirin, eleven train tickets (the return half of which had not been given up), four tram tickets, cinema and theatre stubs, seven pence three farthings in loose change and the mandatory throat lozenge stuck to the lining. At least, those had been the extra contents of Phyrne's bag the last time Dot had turned it out.

I remind my American readers that biscuits in England and Australia are crispy flat things such as you call cookies, and the soft doughy things you call biscuits are what we call scones. And they say we speak the same language…

Amazement could go no further. If Phryne had ridden in on a unicorn he would merely have remarked on its elegant hocks and golden horn and suggested that she enter it weight for age at Felmington. Well, no, not a unicorn. Not Phryne. A dragon, perhaps. He was sure that she could tame a dragon.

Miss Phryne Fisher. Investigations. 221B, The Esplanade, St Kilda,’ read Bunji. ‘You becoming a private Dick, eh? What larks! And what luck about the address.’ ‘It wasn’t luck, I just added a B to 221. I bought the house for the number. You must drop in and see me, Bunji. Now come upstairs and we’ll find you a gown.

Don’t be silly, Phryne, I’m an—’ ‘Invert?’ said Phryne. ‘Of course you are.’ She said this as though he had just claimed to have blue eyes, as something utterly ordinary. ‘And that means,’ John persisted, ‘that I am a sinner.’ ‘Rubbish,’ said Phryne sharply. ‘No one can help whom they love. I am positive that your God doesn’t care a fig.

She restored herself with a cocktail and an excellent lobster mayonnaise. Phryne was devoted to lobster mayonnaise, with cucumbers.

Lindsay was treated likewise by Mr. Butler, who washed his face as though he was five years old and still unreliable with chocolate.

The Colonel was far too firmly married and full of military honours to be a threat to Phryne’s virtue, or what remained of it, so she agreed.

Bert was short and stout. Cec was tall and lanky. Between them, there was nothing that they could not reach.

Ruth did not approve of young men. So noisy.

The butterfly danced on the flower.

nothing like a few days of people telling you that you are mad and deluded when you know that you are telling the truth to turn the brain.

Phryne opened her book and sipped her lemonade. Agatha Christie. What a plotter. Phryne wished briefly that the real world was so amenable to being solved. ***

Phryne always existed as a still, self-possessed point in a maelstrom. Usually she had created the maelstrom herself.

She had always found platypuses irresistible proof that God likes a joke as much as anyone else.

Phryne had defences against almost any argument, but not against two pretty young men at her feet. Very decorative they were and she might have uses for them.

not the dead ye have to be concerned about! Beware of the Living!

Phryne read a detective story, frequently going back because she suddenly found herself reading a conversation between two characters she had not met before—

Narrative has its prerogatives and I am not going to spoil a good story or the fairies may not give me any new ones.

They are not aesthetic like a puppy or a kitten. In fact, they always look drunk to me. Look at that one—you’d swear he had been hitting the gin.

The Albion was a spacious pub, built in the days when a public house with any pretensions to gentility had to have fourteen foot ceilings, brass taps and a polished wooden bar you skate down. ... Bert, in his reflective moments, considered that if heaven didn't have a well-appointed pub where a man could sit down over a beer for a yarn with the other angels, then he didn't want to go there.

One invited artists to social events, but only for the pleasure of their company. To invite singers or dancers to perform for their supper was inexpressively vulgar, and deserved a prompt and stinging rebuke.

To Hell with all racialists,' she said aloud. 'And to Hell with eugenics, degenerate heredity, miscegenation and frauds who pile up skulls like a conqueror as well. May they choke on their bones.' A passing gentleman boggled at her and crossed to the other side of La Trobe Street. 'There is no place for them in the Kingdom of Heaven,' she added, rolling the phrase over her tongue and filing it for future reference.

If you repose your trust in anything, Mr. Collins, you can rely on her. She may whisk you in the night as on a broom and frighten the wits out of you, but what she swears to do, she will do. And she is very fond of her maid.

His dad had always told him that the red-faced were blusterers, not to be taken seriously. 'But if you see a bloke who's pale and shaking, son,' Bert's father had instructed, 'then run like blazes, because he might flamin' kill you.

Another object lesson of why humans should have stayed in trees, where they could not behave in such an idiotic way. Or possibly we should never have emerged from the sea. Evolution, Phryne sometimes thought, had a long way to go before the Homo became even close to Sapiens.

All this display, while the working classes were pinched beyond bearing; it was not wise, or tasteful: it smacked of ostentatious wealth. The Europe from which Phryne had lately come was impoverished, even the nobility; and was keeping its head down, still shocked by the Russian revolution. It had become fashionable to make no display; understatement had become most stylish.

Robinson had long mastered the art of coming instantly awake, a skill which had proved invaluable when his children were young. He could be out of his bed, supplying nutriment, water, or a story, before his wife turned over in her sleep. He attributed his long and happy marriage to the fact that unlike most mothers, his wife got to sleep through the night when he was at home.

So it was that Phryne acquired a skimpy costume of Fugi cotton, with fringes, in a blinding shade of pink known colloquially as ‘baby’s bottom’, a pair of near-kid boots with two-inch heels, an evening bag fringed and beaded to within an inch of complete inutility, stockings in peach, and a dreadful cloche hat with a drunken brim in electric blue plush. Her method in choosing these garments was simple. Anything at which Dot exclaimed, ‘Oh, no, Miss!’ she bought.

Leviticus was a series of rules for a nomadic desert-dwelling culture, where it was sensible not to eat bacteria-enhanced shellfish or terrine of unclean creeping things, where you needed to isolate people who might have leprosy, granted. But consider: if you wish to condemn yourself to hell for Leviticus 18:22, then you need to carry out all the rest of the laws—stoning blasphemers, buying foreign slaves, killing witches, making burnt offerings, and slaying those who twist thread of two types, which

1/2 cup plain flour 1 cup caster sugar 3/4 cup desiccated coconut 4 eggs vanilla 125 g butter, melted 1/2 cup flaked almonds 1 cup milk Grease a deep pie dish and preheat the oven to 180 degrees. Put all the ingredients except half the almonds and the milk in a bowl and mix well, then add the milk slowly and beat until you get a cake batter. Pour it into the pie dish, top with the with rest of the almonds. Bake for about 35 minutes. It miraculously turns itself into a spongy sort of layered coconut cake, lovely with stewed fruit and cream.

Oh wondrous,' murmured Lin Chung. 'Oh, water, mistress of earth, valley spirit, eternal feminine!' 'Taoism again?' Phryne leaned close to hear what he was whispering. 'From the "Tao Te Ching." The old Master should have seen this. All made by water, the female, cold, moon principle.' 'Yin,' said Phryne. 'This is the womb of the earth.' 'Indeed.' He took her hand. 'Completely foreign to all male, hot, sun creatures.' 'Like you?' 'Like me. Yang can only admire and tremble.' 'Come along.' She led him into the centre of the huge space. 'We don't want to get lost in the earthmother's insides.

Cold leek and potato soup. Little pastry boats filled with minced chicken or fish in a white sauce. A large green salad, a tomato and spring onion salad, a cold roast of beef with horseradish or port wine jelly to taste, cold roasted chickens with sage and onion stuffing, with a variety of crisp cold vegetables, each with their proper sauces. Fruit salad. A marmalade-filled roulade with slices of sugared oranges and crème Chantilly which was even now rolling in its damp tea towel as though there were no such things as culinary accidents in the world. Cheeses and fruits and coffee or tea.

Jane bit her lip. ‘You’re thinking about Mrs. Behan, aren’t you?’ she asked. ‘I did apologise.’ ‘I know, and that the question of the real colour of her hair was only to be expected if one insists on dyeing grey-brown hair that very metallic shade of red. But it’s a known middle-class fact that ladies do not dye their hair. Only actresses and prostitutes dye their hair.

Mr. Butler poured the wine, a straw-coloured hock from South Australia, where the vines had been tended in German, which made them pay attention and get on with growing and producing Rhine quality wine, alsbalt!

of course, and then the princes and the royal dukes. Then ordinary dukes. Then we have marquess and marchioness, earl and countess, viscount and viscountess, baron and baroness, all of whom are addressed as my lord and my lady, then baronets and knights, called Sir, whose ladies are just called Lady. That is why my friend is called Lady Alice and Phryne

Phryne spent a blameless evening reading The Winter’s Tale with Ruth, who was still convinced that Shakespeare could bear translation. ‘Why does he take so long to say anything?’ ‘The Elizabethan stage had no scenes and only hand-props. His actors had to create the scene, as well as the action. Look how cleverly he has leafed the innocent conversation of the Queen and Polixenes with the King’s own jealous thoughts. It works very well onstage, I promise. We

Miss Jones was the sort of person who is concealed, like the nun in the foundation, in every organisation which does Good Works. Patient, dogged, meticulous, vastly overworked, unpaid and completely unappreciated, she finds, files, calls, arranges, soothes and ameliorates papers, contracts, tradesmen, repairs, hurt feelings and Very Important People. No one notices her until God finally calls her home or she quits to look after her aged parents, when the whole edifice instantly falls astonished to the ground.

Dot always felt that picnics were best enjoyed inside a nice house with tables and chairs and a reliable stone flagged floor.

She had met women of this cast of mind before—the clingers, fragile and utterly ruthless, who wore down friend after friend with their emotional demands, always ill and exhausted and badly treated, but still retaining enough energy to scream reproaches at the retreating friend as she fled, guilt-stricken, down the hall. And the next week to replace that friend—always female—with another. Phryne recognized Mrs Andrews as an emotional trap, and had no choice but to throw herself in.

Trombone players have a terrible thirst,’ he explained. ‘You could blow out your soul in a trombone.

Phryne, who was not very shockable, was shocked. She hoped that better obsequies would be spoken over her own corpse.

It was a cold winter’s day in St Kilda, and Mrs Ragnell was wrapped up so tightly in furs and a sense of personal grievance that she resembled a polar bear with a hangover.

Thank you, Matthew.’ Phryne inclined her chin towards him. ‘And just so you know, if you ever go anywhere near Jean again, I will hunt you down with a blunt knife and carve my initials in your liver. Good day!’ ***

Charlie’s a bit older—maybe twenty-one?—and he’s a bit fresh with us girls. He makes rude comments.’ ‘Suggestive remarks?’ ‘Yes. But I slap him down. Helen just blushes and ignores him. She’s polite. I’m not.’ ‘Good for you, Janet.

The journey homewards in Phryne’s Hispano-Suiza was no more sprightly than usual and Dot contrived to survive it, as was her wont, by keeping her eyes shut and praying unobtrusively.

The wages of sin is death, he reckons.’ ‘So is the salary of virtue,’ murmured Phryne. ‘And at least the wicked have a good time.

Lucy wailed and tore her hair, an act which Phryne had never actually seen before.

Several voices called out suggestions. Phryne replied so indelicately that there was another silence. Not even the dock women swore like that.

She broke my heart,’ he muttered, slumping into his chair. ‘You should never entrust your heart, or other important organs, to anyone with that shade of hair or those blue eyes,’ said Phryne unsympathetically

Ubi est liber? she wrote, pinned back the notice and went home to read Malory, a prospect which did not please.

Extended study of medieval verse, thought Phryne at breakfast, produces a hangover almost as bad as that obtained by drinking absinthe cocktails.

Several students were lying at ease on the grass, and some hardy souls were reading, though most appeared to be absorbing literature by the osmosis method, which involved resting one’s head on the text and hoping that some of the knowledge would seep through into the sleeping skull.

Miss Fisher, what is this all about?’ demanded Hoskins, who had never approved of women as a sex and particularly disliked excitable ones. ‘Why the ladder?

Let me go or I’ll break your arm,’ she advised him. ‘Goodnight, Mr Clarke.’ She did not necessarily wait until her own door was closed before she added, ‘And good riddance!

My, Phryne, what a large car, and so very red! When I was a gel, I would have been considered fast for driving in it.’ She hopped into the car with delight. ‘But now I’m old, I can be as fast as I like, and I do find it refreshing

Phryne was interested in the colour of his face—a glowing purple—but reflected that it clashed lamentably with her gown.

My dear girl, revenge is always sweet but it is not generally profitable