Elly Griffiths > Quotes

“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.”
― Elly Griffiths, The Crossing Places

“You know how thick I am. I don't even eat yoghurt because it's got culture in it.”
― Elly Griffiths, The Janus Stone

“Maybe humans need animals to help them understand the world. Certainly it’s hard to see what else cats do for humans, aside from looking cute and killing the odd mouse.”
― Elly Griffiths, A Dying Fall

“Libraries are the cathedrals of the modern age. All that knowledge, available for anyone to use. It’s quite a subversive thought.”
― Elly Griffiths, The Chalk Pit

“Grey’s OK on a man,’ says Mary-Anne. ‘Silver fox and all that.’ Ruth notices that Frank doesn’t seem to mind this description. She also muses that there isn’t a female equivalent to ‘silver fox’. ‘Grey-haired old bat’ doesn’t cover it somehow.”
― Elly Griffiths, The Outcast Dead

“Hell is empty and all the devils are here.”
― Elly Griffiths, The Stranger Diaries

“You need a break, a complete rest, recharge your batteries.' Recharge your batteries. What the hell does that mean? Nelson prides himself on not needing batteries. He's an old-fashioned, wind-up model.”
― Elly Griffiths, A Dying Fall

“The past is dead. She, as an archaeologist, knows that better than most. But she knows too that it can be seductive.”
― Elly Griffiths, The Crossing Places

“Why is her first reaction to invitations always to think of a way of refusing them?”
― Elly Griffiths, The Crossing Places

“If one should say to you that the soul perishes like the body, answer that the flower withers but the seed remains.”
― Elly Griffiths, The Outcast Dead

“Nelson nods again. ‘It’s every parent’s worst nightmare. The worst, the very worst. When you have children, suddenly the world seems such a terrifying place. Every stick and stone, every car, every animal, Christ, every person, is suddenly a terrible threat. You realise you’d do anything, anything, to keep them safe: steal, lie, kill, you name it. But sometimes there just isn’t anything you can do. And that’s the hardest thing.”
― Elly Griffiths, The Crossing Places

“I know you've all got it in for me," says Bob. "You fitted me up for one crime, why not pin every child murder in the last twenty years on me?" His voice rises hysterically.

"That seems rather an extreme reaction," says Tim. "I just asked what you were doing yesterday afternoon.”
― Elly Griffiths, The Outcast Dead

“There's a pleasure being mad that only the madman knows.”
― Elly Griffiths, The House at Sea's End

“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.”
― Elly Griffiths, The Chalk Pit

“She has got her figure back after having the baby, which is a shame—she was rather hoping to get someone else’s.”
― Elly Griffiths, The Ruth Galloway Series: The First Three Novels

“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.”
― Elly Griffiths, The Stranger Diaries

“She doesn’t place the rights of animals above those of humans but she does, undoubtedly, prefer her cats to many humans.”
― Elly Griffiths, A Room Full of Bones

“She’s unmarried but, as she confided early on to Judy, ‘not short of offers’. Nelson often thinks that Jo is not nearly as attractive as she thinks she is but, as with all these things, her insane self-belief rubs off on others, and after a week King’s Lynn police were treating her as if she were Helen of Troy. Her technique is divide and rule.”
― Elly Griffiths, The Chalk Pit

“Ruth isn’t going to be bossed about by a woman in tight trousers who thinks she’s Helen Mirren playing Jane Tennison. She”
― Elly Griffiths, The Chalk Pit

“Kate is now walking. She started at ten months, which is early according to the books. And while Ruth was proud of her daughter for reaching this milestone ahead of time (walking at ten months = first class honours degree from Cambridge), she can’t help thinking that it was easier when she could carry her everywhere.”
― Elly Griffiths, A Room Full of Bones

“To lose your child, to have her spirited away like something from a fairy tale, surely that must be every mother’s nightmare.”
― Elly Griffiths, The Crossing Places

“Omnia Mutantur, Nihil Interit, everything changes, nothing perishes,”
― Elly Griffiths, The Janus Stone

“This is one of the worst things about being a working mother. Oh, the work’s all right. You can make arrangements for the work. It’s all the other stuff. The drinks after work, the leaving dos, the Friday nights when someone suggests a curry. All the times, in fact, when the important bonding gets done. Ruth has to miss all that, and she’s lost count of the times when she’s been the last to hear about a dig because ‘we discussed it last night in the pub.’ Phil is a great one for networking, he’s always skulking off with a few cronies to plot over pasta but, then again, Phil is only a working father. Having children doesn’t seem to impinge on his professional life at all.”
― Elly Griffiths, The Outcast Dead

“The landscape itself is important. This is a liminal zone, between land and water, sea and sky . . .”
― Elly Griffiths, The Stone Circle

“The wife belongs to a book club. All they do is moan about their husbands. They never talk about the bloody books at all.”
― Elly Griffiths, The Crossing Places

“Maybe humans need animals to help them understand the world.”
― Elly Griffiths, A Dying Fall

“She glances at her wrist where a Fitbit, a Christmas present from her brother Simon and sister-in-law Cathy, sits smugly. She presses the button and it tells her that she has walked 2,007 steps since getting up (it tracks her sleep too). Surely it’s more than that? She sometimes suspects Cathy, at least, of less-than-charitable motives in giving this particular present, a sort of mini-Cathy that nags her all day about doing more exercise. Ruth fears that her relationship with the Fitbit is already an unhealthy one. She worries about its good opinion of her (otherwise why not take it off?)”
― Elly Griffiths, The Stone Circle

“A people who elect corrupt politicians, imposters, thieves and traitors are not victims, but accomplices.”
― Elly Griffiths, The Postscript Murders

“Class is a stronger social adhesive than nationality.”
― Elly Griffiths, The House at Sea's End

“Flint jumps onto the table and arranges himself, with geometrical precision, on the exact article that Ruth is reading.”
― Elly Griffiths, The Outcast Dead