Lindsey Davis

"Petronius once told me that pathological murderers tend to start their killing sprees while they are children. Find a man who takes prostitutes off the streets as a personal vocation, and he'll probably have a set of neat jars with his childhood collection of dissected rats."

"On the scale of country crime, rape tended to rank with shouting boo at chickens."

"Afterwards, sometimes she dared to remember being in his arms. How, after only clumsy couplings with others, she and this man had straightaway come together as a perfect fit. How they moved together, in effortless synchronicity and with such deep pleasure. How when their exercise left them exhausted, she cried a little, so Vinius wiped her eye with his index finger, murmuring kindly, 'No tears!' before they both fell into profound sleep. How her troubled mind had drowned in peace, her body melting against his..."

"He was dead. No point speculating. Cherish the past for what it was, an ideal, a signal that human happiness might be a possibility. Raise your standards. Make a decent life, Lucilla. Life is all there is. If it's only once, it must be good... He had been right. If perfection only happened once, that was better than never. Now nothing for her would ever again entail complete despair. So thank you, Gaius Vinius Clodianus, son of Marcus, thank you for your good deed, a deed that brightened somebody's dark world."

"If being hit on the head by a falling flower tub could be worth cash to the victim, what price a child’s life under civil law?"

"Sometimes you run away by yourself purely so someone who cares will come to find you. Half the time nobody does. That's the tragedy of life."

"He had the kind of personality that makes you think a boy will grow up to be a public torturer."

"I despise women who rely on men entirely for their own existence."

"A wise partner does not come between her man and his best friend."

"No woman who builds a career on hard work and talent will ever compliment a much younger one who uses the shallow gift of her looks."

"Curiosity is a terrible inducement."

"They were not beggars; well, not in the usual sense. They were Christians, who wanted not just my nephews' money but their souls."

"Their work was undercover—yet their existence unconcealed. That is how fear works."

"Sometimes information you barely noticed consciously comes back to you of its own accord."

"There comes a point for a nut-lover, Quintus thought, where funeral food is worth taking a risk, even when you are dining with a megalomaniac who wants to kill you."

"Think of tonight as having a real purpose. Yes, it is dining with the dead in order to be at one with our ancestors, but at the same time, a good scoff in shared company provides solace for the unhappy, it anneals the internal stress of bereavement, it helps the living along the path of their recovery from grief.” “That’s a useful motto for a caterer!"

"[Y]ou would think happy wedding guests would tuck in with gusto—yet ... [i]t’s mourners at funerals who scoff.” “Because this is food as human comfort, plus respect for the national gods. We are one with our ancestors and one with our fellow mourners."

"Do we think Locusta is still alive?” “If so, she would have to be about two hundred.” “Sipping at the Fountain of Youth?” “No, I think she was killed in the Year of the Four Emperors.” “Poison?” “Natural causes—execution.” “Did she train up apprentices?” “Yes, but the old crafts are dying. No one wants to be bothered. These days you can’t find suppliers with the expertise, however big a bribe you offer."