Behind the 8-ball, as usual
Oh man, I just saw my favorite author Barbara Mertz, writer of my beloved Amelia Peabody mysteries under the pseudonym Elizabeth Peters, died in August!
RIP Barbara. Thank you so much for your wonderful writing. It was a great pleasure to go on adventures with a heroine like Amelia. Intelligent, logical, witty, a bit Machiavellian, wonderfully flawed and a lot of fun, I need more Amelias in my life.
In Barbara's honor, here are a few of my favorite "Peabodyisms:"
-"Marriage should be a balanced stalemate between equal adversaries."
-"Another shirt ruined!"
-"Abstinence, as I have often observed, has a deleterious effect on the disposition."
-"Godly persons are more vulnerable than most to the machinations of the ungodly."
-"I would not be at all surprised to find that it was for gold that Cain committed the first murder. (It happened a very long time ago, and Holy Writ, though no doubt divinely inspired, is a trifle careless about details. God is not a historian.)"
-"I always say there is nothing more comfortable or commodious than a tomb."
-"Men always have some high-sounding excuse for indulging themselves."
-"The difficulty was that he was a man."
-"It is impossible for any rational mind to follow the peculiar mental convolutions that pass for logic among the male sex."
-"Emerson likes to think he is the master of his fate and the lord of all he surveys. It is a delusion common to the male sex and accounts for the sputtering fury with which they respond to the slightest interference with their plans, no matter how impractical those plans may be."
-"The trouble with unknown enemies is that they are so difficult to identify."
-"A lady cannot be blamed if a master criminal takes a fancy to her."
-"I have known several villains who were perfect gentlemen."
-"High-minded individuals are more dangerous than criminals. they can always find hypocritical excuses for committing acts of violence."
-"These hired thugs are never reliable."
-"I hope I number patience among my virtues, but shilly-shallying, when nothing is to be gained by the delay, is not a virtue."
-"When one is striding bravely into the future one cannot watch one's footing."
-"All is fair in love, war and journalism."
RIP Barbara. Thank you so much for your wonderful writing. It was a great pleasure to go on adventures with a heroine like Amelia. Intelligent, logical, witty, a bit Machiavellian, wonderfully flawed and a lot of fun, I need more Amelias in my life.
In Barbara's honor, here are a few of my favorite "Peabodyisms:"
-"Marriage should be a balanced stalemate between equal adversaries."
-"Another shirt ruined!"
-"Abstinence, as I have often observed, has a deleterious effect on the disposition."
-"Godly persons are more vulnerable than most to the machinations of the ungodly."
-"I would not be at all surprised to find that it was for gold that Cain committed the first murder. (It happened a very long time ago, and Holy Writ, though no doubt divinely inspired, is a trifle careless about details. God is not a historian.)"
-"I always say there is nothing more comfortable or commodious than a tomb."
-"Men always have some high-sounding excuse for indulging themselves."
-"The difficulty was that he was a man."
-"It is impossible for any rational mind to follow the peculiar mental convolutions that pass for logic among the male sex."
-"Emerson likes to think he is the master of his fate and the lord of all he surveys. It is a delusion common to the male sex and accounts for the sputtering fury with which they respond to the slightest interference with their plans, no matter how impractical those plans may be."
-"The trouble with unknown enemies is that they are so difficult to identify."
-"A lady cannot be blamed if a master criminal takes a fancy to her."
-"I have known several villains who were perfect gentlemen."
-"High-minded individuals are more dangerous than criminals. they can always find hypocritical excuses for committing acts of violence."
-"These hired thugs are never reliable."
-"I hope I number patience among my virtues, but shilly-shallying, when nothing is to be gained by the delay, is not a virtue."
-"When one is striding bravely into the future one cannot watch one's footing."
-"All is fair in love, war and journalism."