The Crossing Places 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

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

“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

“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

“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

“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

“He is tall and dark, with greying hair cut very short and there is something hard about him, something contained and slightly dangerous that makes her think that he can’t be a student and certainly not a lecturer.”
― Elly Griffiths, The Crossing Places

“Once you have had a child, can you ever go back to being the person you were?”
― Elly Griffiths, The Crossing Places

“Ruth doesn’t have children and she has never been pregnant. Now that she is nearly forty and thinking that she might never have a child, it all seems such a waste. All that machinery chugging away inside her, making her bleed each month, making her moody and bloated and desperate for chocolate. All that internal plumbing, all those pipes gurgling away, all for nothing.”
― Elly Griffiths, The Crossing Places

“But for Ruth, that moment when she held Lucy in her arms was a turning point. She knew then that she would do anything to protect Lucy. She knew then what it is to be a mother.”
― Elly Griffiths, The Crossing Places

“Perhaps it is just that she learnt the value of the maternal cliché, the love that is always the same no matter how many years pass and burns no less strongly by being expressed in time-worn phrases.”
― Elly Griffiths, The Crossing Places

“Peter is suffering from an attack of nostalgia, she knows the symptoms. She mustn't join in otherwise she'll be swept away too, drowning in a quicksand of the past.”
― Elly Griffiths, The Crossing Places

“You sound quite a fan of archaeology, Harry.' Nelson grunted. ' Lots of its bollocks, of course, but you can't deny they know their stuff. And I like the way they do things. It's organised. I like organisation.”
― Elly Griffiths, The Crossing Places

“Why didn’t the skeleton go to the ball? Because he had no body to dance with.”
― Elly Griffiths, The Crossing Places

“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

“The Saltmarsh and its henge are completely imaginary. There was, however, a bronze-age henge found in North Norfolk, at Holme-next-the-Sea. For descriptions of this henge I am indebted to Francis Pryor’s marvellous book Seahenge (HarperCollins).”
― Elly Griffiths, The Crossing Places

“She remembers her mother telling her that animals don’t have souls. Another black mark against God.”
― Elly Griffiths, The Crossing Places

“Will o’the wisps are lights, often seen on marshland and often on the night of the summer solstice.”
― Elly Griffiths, The Crossing Places

“cursuses.’ ‘Never heard of it.’ ‘Exactly! It’s a very technical word. It means a parallel ditch with banks on the inner sides.”
― Elly Griffiths, The Crossing Places

“King’s Lynn was once a huge tidal lake. That’s what Lynn means. It’s the Celtic word for lake.”
― Elly Griffiths, The Crossing Places

“It is utterly desolate and Ruth has absolutely no idea why she loves it so much.”
― Elly Griffiths, The Crossing Places

“le gusta estar con otro experto, otra persona entusiasmada por su trabajo.”
― Elly Griffiths, Los ecos del pantano

“la Navidad no es más que un injerto moderno en el gran solsticio invernal.”
― Elly Griffiths, Los ecos del pantano

“Durante un momento se les vio unidos: una familia feliz, bromista y un poco estresada en plenas compras navideñas”
― Elly Griffiths, Los ecos del pantano

“Lo que entra en las arenas allí se queda para siempre.”
― Elly Griffiths, Los ecos del pantano

“El agua como fuente de vida y como espacio de muerte.”
― Elly Griffiths, Los ecos del pantano

“Está claro que Collins era un buen conocedor del paisaje ritual del mar y de la tierra, y de los extraños y fantasmagóricos lugares que se extienden entre ambos.”
― Elly Griffiths, Los ecos del pantano

“Los faros iluminan el asfalto de la carretera. A ambos lados la tierra se pierde de vista, dándole la sensación de que conduce por la nada. Delante solo está la carretera; encima, solo el cielo. «Donde se juntan la tierra y el cielo.»”
― Elly Griffiths, Los ecos del pantano

“–El carbono 14 está presente en la atmósfera de la Tierra. Lo absorben las plantas, luego los animales se las comen y nosotros nos comemos a los animales. Total, que todos absorbemos carbono 14, hasta que al morirnos dejamos de absorberlo y el que hay en nuestros huesos empieza a descomponerse. Por eso, medir la cantidad de carbono 14 que queda en un hueso es una manera de saber su antigüedad.”
― Elly Griffiths, Los ecos del pantano

“–Los cuerpos enterrados en turba se conservan en un estado casi perfecto, pero hay quien cree que los enterraron en turberas con algún propósito. Para aplacar a los dioses.”
― Elly Griffiths, Los ecos del pantano