Mirabelle Bevan Quotes

Nothing is long ago in an archive, my dear. In the records we treat the dead as same as the living.
that's the whole point of keeping papers. It doesn't matter if it's a hundred years or only a few weeks. It's all filed away, fresh as the day it went under the covers. ~ Sara Sheridan

If there's one shade a woman of colour can't wear it's got to be the one everyone expects, hasn't it? ~ Sara Sheridan

This investigation felt difficult, like driving in fog. ~ Sara Sheridan

I like you in green,' he said. 'You look as if you're a very beautiful imp.' ~ Sara Sheridan

Jack had been the love of her life and he was gone. It seemed now that there had never been bad times, though she knew that wasn't true. ~ Sara Sheridan

Why, that means you're just a ... busybody. You could be anyone. You could be a journalist.' ~ Sara Sheridan

In the middle section of the book Mirabelle breaks into not one, but two houses near Belgravia Books. I had fun scoping these out - checking which windows looked least secure and figuring out how to scale the mews houses to the rear to get her inside. A man came out at one point, 'What are you doing?' he questioned me. 'The thing is, I'm writing a book,' I started with a smile. He waved me off, his hand as wide as a tennis racket. 'Everyone is writing a book, my dear,' he said. Between you and I, it's his house that MIrabelle ends up breaking into. ~ Sara Sheridan

So what if she wasn't a pushover? So what if she had some mettle and didn't wear her heart on her sleeve? She had done everything she had done for the best. For king and country. ~ Sara Sheridan

Mirabelle? Mirabelle Bevan? Well, I'll be blowed!"
Mirabelle started, almost spilling her drink. It took her a moment to realize who the handsome man was, now his hair was greying at the edges and he was out of uniform. Puffing laconically on a cigarette, martini in hand, he wore a lounge suit and an understated silk tie with a discreet regimental insignia woven into the fabric.
"Eddie," she smiled. "What are you doing here? ~ Sara Sheridan

She curled sideways into the milky light of the bedside lamp and began to read. ~ Sara Sheridan

Didn't young people care what the generation before them had achieved? And if not, why had everyone gone through those grim difficult wartime years? ~ Sara Sheridan

Mirabelle sat down, dropping into the cushions like a ball being caught in a large leather glove. ~ Sara Sheridan

If you put Mirabelle into some of the situations she gets into, there is only one way Mirabelle can behave. ~ Sara Sheridan

A chap wouldn't hole up in Occupied France just to get away from his wife, Vesta. ~ Sara Sheridan

Mirabelle and Vesta have plenty in common because they are facing descrimination in different ways, but they're also a nice contrast. ~ Sara Sheridan

Whereas Mirabelle is tall, thin and sad, Vesta is physically and emotionally her opposite. ~ Sara Sheridan

The world is changing and you're only just becoming accustomed to it. You're changing, I suppose. You've changed since I've known you.'
'How?'
'You've come more alive. ~ Sara Sheridan

He [Winston Churchill] is a man suffering from petrified adolescence. ~ Aneurin Bevan

Ah, well,' the Wizard said. 'I gather from all this-I shall make a note-that sometimes one must sacrifice for love.'
Mirabelle looked intently at the Wizard. 'On the other hand,' the cat said at last, 'sometimes one must refuse to sacrifice. ~ Jeanne Desy

Listening to a speech by [Neville] Chamberlain is like paying a visit to Woolworth's, everything in its place and nothing above sixpence. ~ Aneurin Bevan

Slater Patalis had been drawn to their suburban home because of Elena. Until that awful, cruel day a lifetime ago, they'd been a family of six. Jeffrey, Marguerite, and their four girls. Mirabelle, with her hot blood and wild affection. Ariel, even tempered and bossy and protective. Elena, who wanted to do everything her older sisters did, and Beth, too young to truly remember now who they'd been together before Slater Patalis walked through the kitchen door. ~ Nalini Singh

The Prime Minister has an absolute genius for putting flamboyant labels on empty luggage. ~ Aneurin Bevan

If there were a silent observer, Mirabelle would be seen as a carefree, happy girl who is preparing for a night on the town. But in reality, these activities are the physical manifestations of her stillness. ~ Steve Martin

Without false modetsy, I don't think I have a fraction of the talent of either Bevan of Foot. ~ Neil Kinnock

He seems determined to make a trumpet sound like a tin whistle. ~ Aneurin Bevan

Jordana is in the umpire's highchair.
I walk under the rugby posts and on to the tennis courts, stopping a few metres in front of her, in the service box.
Her legs are crossed.
I wait for her to speak.
'I have two special skills,' she says.
She pulls a sheaf of papers from under her bum. I recognize the font and the text boxes. It's my pamphlet.
'Blackmail,' she says.
She holds up her Zippo in the other hand. I can tell that she has been practising this.
'And pyromania.'
I am impressed that Jordana knows this word.
'Right,' I say.
'I'm going to blackmail you, Ol.'
I feel powerless. She is in a throne.
'Okay,' I say. ~ Joe Dunthorne

The Prime Minister wins debate after debate and loses battle after battle. The country is beginning to say that he fights debates like a war and the war like a debate. ~ Aneurin Bevan

I know that the right kind of leader for the Labour Party is a desiccated calculating machine who must not in any way permit himself to be swayed by indignation. If he sees suffering, privation or injustice he must not allow it to move him, for that would be evidence of the lack of proper education or of absence of self-control. He must speak in calm and objective accents and talk about a dying child in the same way as he would about the pieces inside an internal combustion engine. ~ Aneurin Bevan

The purpose of getting power is to be able to give it away. ~ Aneurin Bevan

This is Clive Christian Number One. It's one of my favorite fragrances, and one of the most exquisite. It's made from entirely pure ingredients, mainly natural aged sandalwood from India and Tahitian vanilla, but a lot of the other ingredients - the ones that produce the fine top notes- they change slightly every year, depending on availability and the perfumers' preference."
Using her skills, she smelled the scarf. "Pineapple, plum, mirabelle, and peach, heart notes of jasmine, ylang ylang, orris, and carnation. I'm betting this is the '08. ~ Jeffrey Stepakoff

No amount of cajolery, and no attempts at ethical or social seduction, can eradicate from my heart a deep burning hatred for the Tory Party. So far as I am concerned they are lower than vermin. ~ Aneurin Bevan

He referred to Aneurin Bevan as 'Urinal' Bevan. As for the working classes, they couldn't write their own names in shit on a lavatory wall. I said I thought they could. ~ Tony Benn

You don't have to gaze into a crystal ball when you can read an open book. ~ Aneurin Bevan

The overhead lights reflect in the glass countertop and mingle in the gray and black of the gloves, resulting in a mother-of-pearl swirl that sometimes sends Mirabelle into a shallow hypnotic dream. ~ Steve Martin

While his brain lay slowly dying, Bevan felt his body come back to life. ~ Stephanie Bedwell-Grime

Why should I question the monkey when I can question the organ grinder. ~ Aneurin Bevan

Freedom is the by-product of economic surplus. ~ Aneurin Bevan

Reactionary: a man walking backwards with his face to the future. ~ Aneurin Bevan

Mirabelle replaces the absent friends with books and television mysteries of the PBS kind. The books are mostly nineteenth-century novels in which women are poisoned or are doing the poisoning. She does not read these books as a romantic lonely hearts turning pages in the isolation of her room, not at all. She is instead an educated spirit with a sense of irony. She loves the gloom of these period novels, especially as kitsch, but beneath it all she finds that a part of her indentifies with all that darkness. ~ Steve Martin

There are two ways of getting into the Cabinet - you can crawl in or kick your way in. ~ Aneurin Bevan

A Society in which the people's wants do not exceed their possessions is not a Socialist society. ~ Aneurin Bevan

Mirabelle is attractive; it's just that she is never the first or second girl chosen. ~ Steve Martin

Mirabelle was always an enigma, and he had the sense that if he pushed her, she'd bolt. ~ Sara Sheridan

Some nights, alone, he thinks of her, and some nights, alone, she thinks of him. Some night these thoughts, separated by miles and time zones, occur at the same objective moment, and Ray and Mirabelle are connected without ever knowing it. ~ Steve Martin

There's a certain magic about writing even when the characters refuse to act the way I want them to. ~ Gloria Bevan

Oh come on man," said Dave. "That's seriously not cool. You're supposed to ride those, not use them as meat shields." ~ Robert Bevan

It is an axiom, enforced by all the experience of the ages, that they who rule industrially will rule politically. ~ Aneurin Bevan

I know that the right kind of political leader for the Labour Party is a desiccated calculating machine. ~ Aneurin Bevan

If an egg breaks it becomes more than it was," Mirabelle says, after considering the matter. "And what is an egg, if not something waiting to be broken?"
"I think the egg was a metaphor."
"Can't make an omelet without breaking a few metaphors," Mirabelle says. ~ Erin Morgenstern

Mirabelle knows, and she lets this be unspoken, that all free things require conversation. Sitting in a darkened movie theatre requires absolutely no conversation at all, whereas a free date, like a walk down Hollywood Boulevard in the busy evening, requires comments, chatter, observations, and with luck, wit. She worries that since they have only exchanged perhaps two dozen words between them, these free dates will be horrible. ~ Steve Martin

We should not be pushing out figured when the facts are in the opposite direction. ~ Aneurin Bevan

There can be no immaculate conception of socialism. ~ Aneurin Bevan

For a while, Mirabelle believes there will be a moment when he will cave in and let himself love her, but eventually she lets the idea go. She hits bottom. She dwells in the muck for several months, not depressed exactly, but involved in a mourning that at first she thinks is for Ray but soon realizes is for the loss of her old self. ~ Steve Martin

Knowing what you want to do and then what you have to do to make it happen is one big difference between adult creativity and child's play. ~ Rob Bevan

Mirabelle is not affected by a man's failures to approach her, as her own self-depreciating attitude never allows the idea that he would in the first place. ~ Steve Martin

The worst thing I can say about democracy is that it has tolerated the Right Honorable Gentleman for four and a half years. ~ Aneurin Bevan

He has the lucidity which is the by-product of a fundamentally sterile mind. ~ Aneurin Bevan

He brings to the fierce struggle of politics the tepid enthusiasm of a lazy summer afternoon at a cricket match. ~ Aneurin Bevan

Lord Marshmoreton: I wish I could get you see my point of view.
George Bevan: I do see your point of view. But dimly. You see, my own takes up such a lot of the foreground ~ P.G. Wodehouse

Poor fellow, he suffers from files. ~ Aneurin Bevan

We know what happens to people who stay in the middle of the road. They get run over! ~ Aneurin Bevan

No society can legitimately call itself civilized if a sick person is denied medical aid because of lack of means. ~ Aneurin Bevan

When life gives you a lemon, it's time for a Cowgirl's Prayer." This was one of her favorite alcoholic concoctions of tequila, lime juice and lemonade. ~ Brenda Bevan Remmes

It is the perfect wrong time for Jeremy to do to Mirabelle what she had done to him - call him up for a quick fix - because;, in a sense, she is now betrothed. Her first date with someone who treated her well obligates her to faithfulness, at least until the relationship is explored. ~ Steve Martin

I would rather be kept alive in the efficient if cold altruism of a large hospital than expire in a gush of warm sympathy in a small one. ~ Aneurin Bevan