J.M. Marcotte

“The jury, having swallowed at one nauseating gulp the business of viewing the body, had settled into their places with that air of conscious importance and simulated modesty which belongs to those initiated into a mystery.”
― Josephine Tey, The Man in the Queue

“The sorrows of humanity are no one’s sorrows, as newspaper readers long ago found out. A frisson of horror may go down one’s spine at wholesale destruction but one’s heart stays unmoved. A thousand people drowned in floods in China are news: a solitary child drowned in a pond is tragedy.”
― Josephine Tey, The Daughter of Time

“She sat facing the window, and he marvelled a little at the contrast between the elegant sophistication of her appearance and the enchanting simplicity of her spirit. She looked as if she should view life from the weary eminence of a throne, and she viewed it like an eager child. He was sub-consciously aware of the significance of the attitude of the inn-keeper and the waitress towards her. Chitterne, in his twenty-seven years, had entertained all kinds of women from all strata of society, and he was aware, without examining the knowledge, that the inn people accepted her as his natural companion. From all those subtle shades of manner which their kind employ to customers they used the one they would have used to Ursula. Her clothes were fashionable and well cut, of course; but clothes alone would not have produced that tribute. There was an aloofness in her beauty, a stillness, something that was almost scorn.”
― Josephine Tey (Elizabeth Mackintosh)

“A 'full' life in my experience is usually full only of other people's demands”
― Josephine Tey, The Franchise Affair