43 Quotes by Elly Griffiths

Why are Georgette Heyer’s covers so naff? When you think of all the exciting things that happen – abductions, false identities, wild horseback chases – the front of the book nearly always shows a woman in a ballgown, simpering sweetly up at a man.

When she bought the cats her mother asked her straight out if they were ‘baby substitutes’. ‘No,’ Ruth had answered, straight-faced. ‘They’re kittens. If I had a baby it would be a cat substitute.

Does the world really need another long essay on environmental archaeology and freshwater mollusks? Well, it’s going to get one, whether it likes it or not.

How can women like Shona and Michelle keep them draped all day? Ruth’s scarves either fall in her coffee or try to strangle her.

It’s to make sense of things,’ she said, at last. ‘Nothing’s as bad if you put it in writing. It helps you to take control, order things. Find a pattern, like you said.

We’ll have to see if CSI picked up anything from the scene,’ says Nelson. ‘Are they finished?’ ‘Yes,’ says Tanya. ‘Shall I liaise with them?’ Tanya loves liaising, it sounds so much more important than keeping in touch. ‘If.

Ruth doesn’t have children and she has never been pregnant. Now that she is nearly forty and thinking that she might never have a child, it all seems such a waste. All that machinery chugging away inside her, making her bleed each month, making her moody and bloated and desperate for chocolate. All that internal plumbing, all those pipes gurgling away, all for nothing.

Why is her first reaction to invitations always to think of a way of refusing them?

Cool. Can I come over? Phil’s got the flu and he’s being such a man about it.