Isabella Muir > Quotes

“My dear Poirot,’ I said coldly, ‘it is not for me to dictate to you. You have a right to your own opinion, just as I have to mine.’ The Mysterious Affair at Styles - Agatha Christie”
― Isabella Muir, The Tapestry Bag: Sleuthing amid the highs and lows of 1960s England...

“too bright, too early’.”
― Isabella Muir, The Tapestry Bag: Sleuthing amid the highs and lows of 1960s England...

“Will you repeat to us what you overheard of the quarrel?’ ‘I really do not remember hearing anything.’ ‘Do you mean to say you did not hear voices?’ ‘Oh, yes, I heard the voices, but I did not hear what they said.’ The Mysterious Affair at Styles - Agatha Christie”
― Isabella Muir, The Tapestry Bag: Sleuthing amid the highs and lows of 1960s England...

“Why did you not tell me? Why? Why?’ He appeared to be in an absolute frenzy. ‘My dear Poirot,’ I expostulated, ‘I never thought it would interest you. I didn’t know it was of any importance.’ ‘Importance? It is of the first importance”
― Isabella Muir, The Tapestry Bag: Sleuthing amid the highs and lows of 1960s England...

“that where she lived in Ireland a woman isn’t even allowed to go into a pub.”
― Isabella Muir, Storms of Change: 1960

“Beware! Peril to the detective who says: ‘It is so small – it does not matter. It will not agree. I will forget it.’ That way lies confusion. Everything matters.’ The Mysterious Affair at Styles - Agatha Christie”
― Isabella Muir, The Tapestry Bag: Sleuthing amid the highs and lows of 1960s England...

“Surely a questioning mind should grab at every opportunity to learn.”
― Isabella Muir, Storms of Change: 1960

“Prosecutions, or, in the words of the defence, a work of literary merit? After all, the author was respected; his novel raised serious issues of class prejudice, inequality, and attitudes to sex that some said belonged to the Victorian era.”
― Isabella Muir, Storms of Change: 1960

“Chapter 6 ‘My dear Poirot,’ I said coldly, ‘it is not for me to dictate to you. You have a right to your own opinion, just as I have to mine.’ The Mysterious Affair at Styles - Agatha Christie”
― Isabella Muir, The Tapestry Bag: Sleuthing amid the highs and lows of 1960s England...

“No surprise, perhaps, that as an adult, a newspaper journalist was the only occupation I ever considered. The lessons I learned back then, as a ten-year-old, still stand me in good stead. Each time I read a headline and the first few paragraphs beneath it, I treat the words like the taster from one dish of a banquet, with all the flavours and textures of a whole host of other dishes just waiting to be discovered.”
― Isabella Muir, Waiting for Sunshine: A child's world is turned upside down...

“But you both seem so happy, Fred. This picture you’re painting of Gilly, it’s as if you talking about someone else.”
― Isabella Muir, Storms of Change: 1960

“Not only that,’ she continued, ‘but if a woman is working and she gets married she has to leave her job. It’s called a marriage bar or some such thing.”
― Isabella Muir, Storms of Change: 1960

“They don’t like you making a fuss,’ the elderly man said. ‘But if we keep quiet, they take no notice, no notice at all.’ He shook his head and I wondered for a moment whether his missing cat was the real reason for him sitting in the police station on a cold, wet November”
― Isabella Muir, Storms of Change: 1960

“What’s your definition of a secret?”
― Isabella Muir, The Tapestry Bag: Sleuthing amid the highs and lows of 1960s England...

“my attempts at reading his body language are as tricky as an Eskimo trying to understand smoke signals.”
― Isabella Muir, Lost Property

“You are annoyed, is it not so?’ he asked anxiously, as we walked through the park. ‘Not at all,’ I said coldly. The Mysterious Affair at Styles - Agatha Christie”
― Isabella Muir, The Tapestry Bag: Sleuthing amid the highs and lows of 1960s England...

“Raymond Chandler’s”
― Isabella Muir, Storms of Change: 1960

“Laughter is sunshine, it chases winter from the human face.'
Victor Hugo 1802-1885”
― Isabella Muir, Waiting for Sunshine: A child's world is turned upside down...

“You need to read, To Kill a Mocking Bird,’ one of the others said. ‘It shines a light on what’s going on in America, especially down south. More than a hundred years since they abolished slavery and what’s changed, eh?”
― Isabella Muir, Storms of Change: 1960

“Here was another example of inequality I had barely considered. A little over thirty years earlier women were still struggling to have the right to vote. Equal pay was still a pipe dream for many women who continued to do the same work for far less money. The expectation was that women would marry, passing over any chance of independence,”
― Isabella Muir, Storms of Change: 1960

“I have a little idea, a very strange, and probably utterly impossible idea. And yet – it fits in.’ The Mysterious Affair at Styles - Agatha Christie”
― Isabella Muir, The Tapestry Bag: Sleuthing amid the highs and lows of 1960s England...

“who is ‘the wind beneath my wings’.”
― Isabella Muir, The Tapestry Bag: Sleuthing amid the highs and lows of 1960s England...

“Young people were in a rush. And in their rush it seemed they were ready to surge forward, stepping over those who had helped to create their future.”
― Isabella Muir, Flashes of Doubt: 1962

“Another book that had been the topic of intense discussion was a novel due to be the subject of a trial in the Old Bailey. It seemed that the goings-on in Lady Chatterley’s Lover had upset too many influential people. Was it truly ‘obscene’ as was argued by the Director of Public Prosecutions,”
― Isabella Muir, Storms of Change: 1960

“It was as if I had fallen into the pages of one of my favourite novels, with none of the comfort or familiarity that enacting a scene from one of Raymond Chandler’s stories might bring. Hard-drinking, tough private eye, Marlowe would surely have a wise crack to throw at the desk sergeant, a ruse to gather information and to get under the skin of the policeman at the same time. But I wasn’t Marlowe and this wasn’t fiction.”
― Isabella Muir, Storms of Change: 1960

“independence, taking responsibility for bringing up children when they came along, providing meals and keeping house. My mother and so many of her generation had done exactly that. Had she ever questioned the path her life was taking? Would she have chosen something else, something different? Could she have made the sort of choices that Gilly had made, to travel, to make fun and excitement her focus?”
― Isabella Muir, Storms of Change: 1960

“I've learned there are many different ways to live and labels, such as 'good', 'bad', 'right', or 'wrong', have no value when it comes to describing the choices people make.”
― Isabella Muir, Waiting for Sunshine: A child's world is turned upside down...

“over twenty years old. Seemingly, whoever occupied the bedsit during the war years enjoyed the Daily Express and the Sunday Pictorial. William flattened out each page, noted the dates, then assembled them in order. ‘We never surrender’, announced the Daily Express as it reported on the evacuation of Dunkirk in the early days of June 1940. Then, later that year, ‘RAF triumphs in biggest air battles of war’.”
― Isabella Muir, Flashes of Doubt: 1962

“Who would have thought the simple action of making pancakes could teach us something about life? I can”
― Isabella Muir, Waiting for Sunshine: A child's world is turned upside down...

“It seemed to William that young folk had an expectation, a sense of entitlement to a better life, with little thought about the struggles their predecessors endured to reach this point.”
― Isabella Muir, Flashes of Doubt: 1962