Simon Brett > Quotes

“The only situation which might justify panic is one in which panic is likely to help. Such a situation never arises. Though pretended panic may sometimes cause a useful diversion, real panic can never be anything other than a waste of energy.”
― Simon Brett, Mrs. Pargeter's Package

“No furniture is so charming as books, even if you never open them or read a single word.”
― Simon Brett, So Much Blood

“Like many other Catholics, Esmond had a crust of Catholic complacency over a thin layer of doubt, which spanned a deep morass of sheer terror.”
― Simon Brett, Murder in the Museum

“The only normal people are the ones you don’t know very well.’ Joe Ancis”
― Simon Brett, The Clutter Corpse

“Someone once said that experience is a comb that life gives you when you’ve lost your hair.”
― Simon Brett, The Penultimate Chance Saloon

“You mean that someone in love is above the restrictions of conventional morality?”
― Simon Brett, A Nice Class of Corpse

“Why is it that animals instantly recognize the human beings who find them most repellent, and immediately focus all their attention on those poor unfortunates?”
― Simon Brett, Mrs Pargeter’s Plot

“The obituary seemed like a washing of the body. It cleaned Steen up. The existence of the photographs, all the sordid aspects of the man's life were rinsed away by the formalised prose. The Western ritual of death was observed — the obligation to remember the most dignified image of the deceased. Like those ghastly American mausoleums where the embalmed corpse is presented at its best, dressed and smiling, prior to burial.”
― Simon Brett, Cast, in Order of Disappearance

“Though a little inevitable commingling occurred for the purposes of procreation, recreational sex was generally outsourced.”
― Simon Brett, Blotto, Twinks and the Suspicious Guests

“Jude was sometimes disturbed by the depths of varied resentments that lay within her neighbour, and wondered whether they could ever fully be eased away. Carole did seem to make life unnecessarily difficult for herself.”
― Simon Brett, The Torso in the Town

“Still, Mrs Pargeter reflected, you didn’t have to be very intelligent to be a solicitor. Just somehow scrape through a few exams in your twenties and then the British legal system saw to it that you had a meal ticket for life.”
― Simon Brett, A Nice Class of Corpse

“essentials”
― Simon Brett, The Body on the Beach

“She remembered her late husband’s precepts about the police. What they did not know, generally speaking, they did not need to know. Ignorance in the Police Force, he had always maintained, was a natural state, and who are we, he would ask with a disarming shrug of his shoulders, to interfere with nature?”
― Simon Brett, Mrs, Presumed Dead

“The Western ritual of death was observed—the obligation to remember the most dignified image of the deceased.”
― Simon Brett, Cast, in Order of Disappearance

“No,” Jude agreed softly, “but we can empathize. Anyone who’s been in a relationship where one partner blames the other for their own inadequacies knows the kind of pain involved. Strange how it keeps happening. There are enough unpleasant people out there in the world to cut you down to size. What everyone needs at home is someone to support and bolster them.”
― Simon Brett, The Body on the Beach

“This meant that on the relevant nights Colonel Wicksteed and Mr Dawlish would not miss any of their favourite programme, Coronation Street. (This the two of them, neither of whom had ever in their lives travelled north of Cheltenham, watched with the fascinated bewilderment many people accord to Science Fiction.)”
― Simon Brett, A Nice Class of Corpse

“Horror can only be borne if one ceases to think of the individual identity of those involved;”
― Simon Brett, Mrs Pargeter's Package

“But, goodness me, poor Theresa! What a dreadful thing to happen in Smithy’s Loam!’ ‘Or anywhere,’ Mrs Pargeter observed mildly. She knew that its residents tended to see Smithy’s Loam as the centre of the universe, but murder did remain a relatively offensive crime even in other parts of the world.”
― Simon Brett, Mrs, Presumed Dead

“Amor vincit omnia,”
― Simon Brett, A Nice Class of Corpse

“I can’t think when I was last surprised by anything I did. No, I’ll get my own thing going, I don’t know, I’ll . . .’ He returned to his drink. Maybe he could have finished the sentence, but Charles had a feeling that there was nothing more to add. Mark only wanted the negative benefit of escape; he had no positive thoughts of where he could escape to. Time”
― Simon Brett, The Dead Side of the Mike

“Since Mrs Pargeter had always favoured pulling bushes up by the roots rather than beating about them, she again asked directly what his problem was or who was making his life difficult,”
― Simon Brett, Mrs Pargeter’s Pound of Flesh

“Indeed the fact that Lord Lucan continued to work without harassment as a publican in Dorking was a tribute to the expertise of Jack the Knife.”
― Simon Brett, Mrs Pargeter’s Pound of Flesh

“Mrs Pargeter had that rare quality in any surroundings of being always conspicuous, but never out of place.”
― Simon Brett, Mrs Pargeter’s Pound of Flesh

“I did have to resist the urge to open his bedroom door and check that he was all right. Old habits of motherhood die hard.”
― Simon Brett, The Clutter Corpse

“Don’t waste energy in fear of the future, he had always said. Wait and see what happens, and when it does happen you’ll be surprised at the resources you find within yourself to cope with the situation.”
― Simon Brett, The Complete Mrs Pargeter Crime Mysteries 1–8

“I checked my make-up in the mirror. I don’t wear a lot, but if you’re dealing with people all day, you’ve got to look presentable.”
― Simon Brett, The Clutter Corpse

“Mrs Pargeter reflected, not for the first time, that there is within the human psyche an infinite yearning for humiliation.”
― Simon Brett, Mrs Pargeter’s Pound of Flesh

“doing well at the things she wants to do well at.”
― Simon Brett, The Clutter Corpse

“Why was it, Mrs Pargeter mused, that the only people who said they were the last ones to spread gossip were always such arrant gossip-mongers?”
― Simon Brett, Mrs, Presumed Dead

“But, goodness me, poor Theresa! What a dreadful thing to happen in Smithy’s Loam!’ ‘Or anywhere,’ Mrs Pargeter observed mildly.”
― Simon Brett, Mrs, Presumed Dead