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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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!

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

His voice was heavy with Slavic fatalism.

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?

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.

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

We learn love from the people who love us.

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.

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.

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 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.

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. ***

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 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.

The butterfly danced on the flower.

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—

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

Epigraph But man, proud man, Drest in a little brief authority, Most ignorant of what he’s most assured, His glassy essence, like an angry ape, Plays such fantastic tricks before high Heaven, As would make the angels weep. —William Shakespeare, Measure for Measure

encountering

When you see a rich man’s wife shaking her head over the thriftlessness of the poor because they do not save, pity the lady’s ignorance; but do not irritate the poor by repeating her nonsense to them. George Bernard Shaw The Intelligent Woman’s Guide to Socialism and Capitalism

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

Not a sane one amongst the three of us,” murmured John. Phryne laughed and kissed him. “We shall be happy lunatics,” she told him. “Sanity is overrated.

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 recognized Mrs Andrews as an emotional trap, and had no choice but to throw herself in.

No, really,” said Jack, blushing to show that he wasn’t embarrassed at all. “Do

One can dare a lot if one is Emeritus,

There’s a nasty story…’ Dot began. ‘Do tell,’ encouraged Phryne.

Lie still,’ she urged. ‘You are hurt. Someone shot you, and damn near shot me, too. Who was it?’ The head shook, the lips moved. He was clad in a workman’s collarless blue shirt, and what had been a respectable grey serge suit before he had taken to dying in it.

Her reason might have collapsed by now, of course, 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.

The sermon passed into the general confession, and Phryne admitted with perfect frankness that she had done those things which she ought not to have done and left undone those things which she ought to have done.

Then she heaved over a strange round object, like a big basket made of rushes with a tarred overcoat of—canvas, perhaps? Hugh had never seen such a thing before and said so. ‘’Tis a curragh,’ Mr. O’Malley told him. ‘Other boats use a dinghy but they have to haul it and that’s a drag on a boat. Good sticks they’ve got here, they call them manuka, for making of a true Irish boat. Me and my daughter made it ourselves; it’s just the same as a very big cray pot, so it is. Good manila line here and there’s me corks. Over you go now, my girl, and God be between you and harm.’ Gráinne lowered herself down into the little boat, which bobbed like a duck, and began paddling towards a buoy. When she reached it, she hooked the marker onto a line which the old man began hauling.

spifflicate

The thing about pain,” he went on, “is that it makes you feel rather lonely.

move. I

As I said to that policeman, I don’t know. I’ve

Plump pink prawns studded the seafood aspic as thickly as daisies in a springtime meadow.

A horsehair sofa of uncompromising firmness sat next to two straight-backed, hard-seated chairs.

Phryne escaped from the babble to go outside and scan the ground in front of the broken window.

He was a freak, as you said. Someone did him a favour, killing him.

But he would only spend it on drink! You know what the working classes are!’ ‘Indeed, ma’am, and why should he not spend it on drink? Would you deprive the poor, whose lives are bad and miserable and comfortless enough, of the solace of a little relief from grinding poverty?

You broke the window, Bobby, and you pinched the necklace. Do you want to confess or shall I tell you how you did it?

The rooming house in Carlton where they both lived presently lodged three cats and two dogs which had all been found in extremis and nursed back to aggressive, barking, scratching health by his partner.