Quotes from Dorothy Sayers

To subdue one's self to one's own ends might be dangerous, but to subdue one's self to other people's ends was dust and ashes. Yet there were those, still more unhappy, who envied even the ashy saltness of those dead sea apples.

The one thing which seems to me quite impossible is to take into consideration the kind of book one is expected to write; surely one can only write the book that is there to be written. ( Letter to Muriel St. Clare Byrne , 8 September 1935)

But it is the mark of all movements, however well-intentioned, that their pioneers tend, by much lashing of themselves into excitement, to lose sight of the obvious.

Peter! Were you looking for a horse-shoe? No; I was expecting the horse, but the shoe is a piece of pure, gorgeous luck. And observation. I found it. You did. And I could kiss you for it. You need not shrink and tremble. I am not going to do it. When I kiss you, it will be an important event -- one of those things which stand out among their surroundings like the first time you tasted li-chee. It will not be an unimportant sideshow attached to a detective investigation.

Listen, Harriet. I do unterstand. I know you don't want either to give or to take ... You don't want ever again to have to depend for happiness on another person. That's true. That's the truest thing you ever said. All right. I can respect that. Only you've got to play the game. Don't force an emotional situation and then blame me for it. But I don't want any situation. I want to be left in peace.

And upon his return, Gherkins, who had always considered his uncle as a very top-hatted sort of person, actually saw him take from his handkerchief-drawer an undeniable automatic pistol. It was at this point that Lord Peter was apotheosed from the state of Quite Decent Uncle to that of Glorified Uncle

He had the appeal of a very young dog of a very large breed -- a kind of amiable absurdity.

Here am I, sweating my brains out to introduce a really sensational incident into your dull and disreputable little police investigation, and you refuse to show a single spark of enthusiasm.

Oh, well, faint heart never won so much as a scrap of paper

If men will not understand the meaning of judgement, they will never come to understand the meaning of grace.

The really essential factors of success in any undertaking are money and opportunity, and as a rule, the man who can make the first can make the second.

My idea is that Miss Vane didn't do it, said Wimsey. I dare say that's an idea which has already occurred to you, but with the weight of my great mind behind it, no doubt it strikes the imagination more forcibly.