Colin Dexter

"‘Me and the wife always eat 'em (fish and chips) off the paper - seems to taste better somehow.’ ‘They say it's the newsprint sticking to the chips ... By Jove, your wife's right, Lewis. I'll never eat them off a plate again.’"

"‘It seems you like your coffee half and half, sarge ... half in the cup and half in the saucer.’"

"He passed the blonde just as she turned her head, and he blinked hard. What a world we live in! for the lovely blonde had a lovely beard and side-whiskers down to his chin. Interesting thought ..."

"He hated suicides. ... Was suicide just the coward's refuge from some black despair? Or was it in its way an act of courage that revealed a perverted sort of valour? Not that, though. So many other lives were intertwined: no burdens were shed — they were merely passed from the shoulders of one to those of another."

"‘He's promised to see a psychiatrist — but I'm not very optimistic about that. I only ever knew one psychiatrist. Funny chap. If ever a man was in need of psychiatric treatment it was him.’"

"...he'd come round to the view that Freud would have been a far more valuable citizen if he'd stuck to his research on local anaesthetics."