45 Quotes by Ngaio Marsh

For some reason that he had never been able to understand, Mandrake was a man in whom his fellow-creatures confided. He was by no means obviously sympathetic and he seldom asked for confidences but, perhaps because of these very omissions, they came his way.

Any faithful account of police investigations, in even the most spectacular homicide case would be abysmally dull. I should have thought you'd seen enough of the game to realize that. The files are a plethora of drab details, most of them entirely irrelevant. Your crime novelist gets over all that by writing grandly about routine work and then seleting the essentials. Quite rightly. He'd be the world's worst bore if he did otherwise.

I tell you what,” said Troy more amiably. “I’ve always been frightened of the whole business. Love and so on.”“The physical side?”“Yes, that, but much more than that. The whole business. The breaking down of all one’s reserves. The mental as well as the physical intimacy.”“My mind to me a kingdom is.

Expectation is the springboard of achievement.

We do not wait for inspiration. We work because we’ve jolly well got to. But when all is said and done, we toil at this particular job because it’s turned out to be our particular job, and in a weird sort of way I suppose we may be said to like it.

One should have the courage of one’s loneliness.

As usual she had a deceptive air of perspicacity.

Custom makes monsters of us all.

No coffee is ever quite as good as it smells...