P.J. Fitzsimmons > Quotes

“Aunty Azalea was always the eccentric one in a family not widely famed for an extravagant excess of marbles.”
― P.J. Fitzsimmons, The Case of the Ghost of Christmas Morning

“You’ll probably want to jump straight to the punchline, in future, when recounting the discovery of a murder.”
― P.J. Fitzsimmons, The Case of the Ghost of Christmas Morning

“It’s very much its own reward, I find, spending other people’s money.”
― P.J. Fitzsimmons, The Case of the Ghost of Christmas Morning

“It’ll be just like Romeo and Juliet,” I said, “without the emotive poetry of a suicide pact —”
― P.J. Fitzsimmons, The Case of the Ghost of Christmas Morning

“This is the rummiest ingredient of this rum cocktail.”
― P.J. Fitzsimmons, The Case of the Ghost of Christmas Morning

“We don’t seize the moment, there’ll be another foreign skirmish or some American flying a hot air balloon to the moon or someplace...”
― P.J. Fitzsimmons, The Case of the Ghost of Christmas Morning

“I believe that Americans will buy anything so long as someone else buys one first.”
― P.J. Fitzsimmons, The Case of the Ghost of Christmas Morning

“She was to bashfulness what that Pythagoras chap was to sorting out the area of the She was to bashfulness what that Pythagoras chap was to sorting out the area of the square of the hypotenuse once and for all.”
― P.J. Fitzsimmons, The Case of the Ghost of Christmas Morning

“I’ve run entirely out of tolerance for puerile prattle.”
― P.J. Fitzsimmons, The Tale of the Tenpenny Tontine

“I awake heavily, as a rule. Dreamily and just beneath the waves, like a jellyfish — sometimes rising near the surface of lucidity only to slip away again into the deeps. With each ebb and flow, reality makes itself known to me in small, genial gestures. Here’s a little sunlight diffused by the curtains, followed by a return to that dream in which I’m sleeping in a meadow surrounded by rabbits, then a church bell rings, back to the rabbits, and by and by Vickers is there, with a breakfast tray.”
― P.J. Fitzsimmons, The Tale of the Tenpenny Tontine

“And don’t underestimate the lengths a craftsman will go in the pursuit of perfection. Did you know that there are brotherhoods of monks in Belgium who, in order to achieve the absolutely precise balance of humidity, temperature, and yeast culture in the manufacture of their artisanal beers, actually live in Belgium?”
― P.J. Fitzsimmons, The Case of the Case of Kilcladdich

“time stood still while the bartender waited for me to reply. I tried smiling and shaking my head and waving away the question with a casual gesture, but he only looked baffled,”
― P.J. Fitzsimmons, Foreboding Foretelling at Ficklehouse Felling