An advanced old woman is uncontrollable by any earthly force

The Dowager Duchess, indeed, was there – she had promptly hastened to her son’s side and was living heroically in furnished lodgings, but the younger Duchess thought her mother-in-law more energetic than dignified. There was no knowing what she might do if left to herself. She might even give an interview to a newspaper reporter.

...

‘It’s no good, Murbles,’ he said. ‘Time and trouble will tame an advanced young woman, but an advanced old woman is uncontrollable by any earthly force.’

D.L. Sayers, Clouds of Witness (1926), 83 and 267

Country music was the most segregated kind of music in America

So I said, Country music. The average Vietnamese cannot bear it. That southern twang, that peculiar rhythm, those strange stories — the music drives us a little crazy. Perfect, Claude said. So what song’s it going to be? After a little research, I procured a record from the jukebox of one of the Saigon bars popular with white soldiers. “Hey, Good Lookin’ ” was by the famous Hank Williams, the country music icon whose nasal voice personified the utter whiteness of the music, at least to our ears. Even someone as exposed to American culture as I shivered a little on hearing this record, somewhat scratchy from having been played so many times. Country music was the most segregated kind of music in America, where even whites played jazz and even blacks sang in the opera. Something like country music was what lynch mobs must have enjoyed while stringing up their black victims. Country music was not necessarily lynching music, but no other music could be imagined as lynching’s accompaniment. Beethoven’s Ninth was the opus for Nazis, concentration camp commanders, and possibly President Truman as he contemplated atomizing Hiroshima, classical music the refined score for the high-minded extermination of brutish hordes. Country music was set to the more humble beat of the red-blooded, bloodthirsty American heartland. It was for fear of being beaten to this beat that black soldiers avoided the Saigon bars where their white comrades kept the jukeboxes humming with Hank Williams and his kind.

Viet Thanh Nguyen, The Sympathizer (2015), Kindle loc. 1,168

He even included a league table in his diary, ranking his friends in order

[Hugh] Walpole was born in Auckland, New Zealand, where his father - later the bishop of Edinburgh - was canon of St Mary's Cathedral. The family was British, and Walpole's grandfather was the younger brother of the first Prime Minister. After they returned to England, he set his heart on establishing himself as a writer. His fierce ambition was not accompanied by a think skin. He wanted everyone to love him, but in his drive to build a reputation and the right connections he sometimes trampled on the feelings of others. He even included a league table in his diary, ranking his friends in order. Yet he was easily bruised by criticism and incurably jealous . When Hilaire Belloc described P.G. Wodehouse as the best English writer of the day, Wodehouse thought it hilarious, but Walpole was hurt. His wealth provoked envy and he alienated people through trivial disagreements. 

M. Edwards, The Golden age of murder (2015), 164

I can never think of Walpole without thinking of Maugham's portrait in Cakes and Ale, which I love.

Scientific detection is 'too easy'.

 For all its associations with sportsmanship, cricket is governed by complicated laws, and Milne reckoned that if the detective novel was a game, readers and writers need to know the rules. When The Red House Mystery was reprinted, he set out half a dozen key points:

1. The story should be written in good English.
2. Love interest is undesirable.
3. Both detective and villain should be amateurs.
4. Scientific detection is 'too easy'.
5. The reader should know as much as the detective.
6. There should be a Watson: it is better for the detective 'to watsonize' than soliliquize.

M. Edwards, The Golden age of murder (2015), 113

He detested the street-bawling, tract-peddling evangelism of the professional atheists

He called himself an 'agnostic' instead of an 'atheist' only because he detested the street-bawling, tract-peddling evangelism of the professional atheists.

S. Lewis, It can't happen here (1935), 35-36

You put the evidence under their noses, and they start getting teary over snowball fights

This is the whole difficulty of dealing with them, men who are always talking about ancient pedigrees, and boyhood friendships, and things that happened when you were still trading wool on the Antwerp exchange. You put the evidence under their noses, and they start getting teary over snowball fights.

H. Mantel, Wolf Hall (2009), 510

Because what is there, but affairs?

He finds himself praying: this child, his half-formed heart now beating against the stone floor, let him be sanctified by this moment, and let him be like his father’s father, like his Tudor uncles; let him be hard, alert, watchful of opportunity, wringing use from the smallest turn of fortune. If Henry lives twenty years, Henry who is Wolsey’s creation, and then leaves this child to succeed him, I can build my own prince: to the glorification of God and the commonwealth of England. Because I will not be too old. Look at Norfolk, already he is sixty, his father was seventy when he fought at Flodden. And I shall not be like Henry Wyatt and say, now I am retiring from affairs. Because what is there, but affairs?

H. Mantel, Wolf Hall (2009), 466-7

I really like this. Not least because Mantel's Cromwell would obviously have wanted any king to be like Henry VII. Mostly, however, I like the vocalisation of the channel that ambition must run for people like Cromwell.

Not the sort of archbishop we like to encourage at the moment

Any year before this, the king would have gone to pray at Becket’s shrine and leave a rich offering. But Becket was a rebel against the Crown, not the sort of archbishop we like to encourage at the moment.

H. Mantel, Wolf Hall (2009), 395

The world is not run from where he thinks

How can he explain to him? The world is not run from where he thinks. Not from his border fortresses, not even from Whitehall. The world is run from Antwerp, from Florence, from places he has never imagined; from Lisbon, from where the ships with sails of silk drift west and are burned up in the sun. Not from castle walls, but from counting houses, not by the call of the bugle but by the click of the abacus, not by the grate and click of the mechanism of the gun but by the scrape of the pen on the page of the promissory note that pays for the gun and the gunsmith and the powder and shot.

H. Mantel, Wolf Hall (2009), 378

This I don't think is historically accurate. The banking houses of the early modern era a) went bust a lot and b) got themselves noble titles as quickly as they could. But it's foretelling where the world is going, even if it hasn't quite got there yet.  

You would not like to be in Harry Percy’s country

‘My lady,’ he turns to Anne, ‘you would not like to be in Harry Percy’s country. For you know he would do as those northern lords do, and keep you in a freezing turret up a winding stair, and only let you come down for your dinner. And just as you are seated, and they are bringing in a pudding made of oatmeal mixed with the blood of cattle they have got in a raid, my lord comes thundering in, swinging a sack – oh, sweetheart, you say, a present for me? and he says, aye, madam, if it please you, and opens the sack and into your lap rolls the severed head of a Scot.’

H. Mantel, Wolf Hall (2009), 345

A child of impossible perfection

Grace dies in his arms; she dies easily, as naturally as she was born. He eases her back against the damp sheet: a child of impossible perfection, her fingers uncurling like thin white leaves. I never knew her, he thinks; I never knew I had her. It has always seemed impossible to him that some act of his gave her life, some unthinking thing that he and Liz did, on some unmemorable night. They had intended the name to be Henry for a boy, Katherine for a girl, and, Liz had said, that will do honour to your Kat as well. But when he had seen her, swaddled, beautiful, finished and perfect, he had said quite another thing, and Liz had agreed. We cannot earn grace. We do not merit it.

H. Mantel, Wolf Hall (2009), 152

I shall get his father down from the borders, and if the prodigal defies him, he will be tossed out of his heirdom on his prodigal snout

The cardinal smashes his fist on the table. ‘I’ll tell you how. I shall get his father down from the borders, and if the prodigal defies him, he will be tossed out of his heirdom on his prodigal snout. The earl has other sons, and better. And if you don’t want the Butler marriage called off, and your lady daughter shrivelling unmarriageable down in Sussex and costing you bed and board for the rest of her life, you will forget any talk of pledges, and witnesses – who are they, these witnesses? I know those kind of witnesses who never show their faces when I send for them. So never let me hear it. Pledges. Witnesses. Contracts. God in Heaven!’ 

Boleyn is still smiling. He is a poised, slender man; it takes the effort of every finely tuned muscle in his body to keep the smile on his face.

H. Mantel, Wolf Hall (2009), 69