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Josephine: The murderer is never the one you initially suspect.
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Josephine: She doesn't like me calling her Mommy. She says it ages her.
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Magda: Cure evil with evil.
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Philip Leonides: Besides, who actually wants to work for a living, Mr. Hayward?
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Lady Edith: A little man, Mr. Hayward, who cast a large shadow. A very large and rather crooked shadow.
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Charles Hayward: You know, Josephine the first round of interrogation is not so much about finding clues as it is about getting a sense of who you're dealing with.
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Lady Edith: It is a hothouse of suppressed passion. This is what happens when the person you love the most in the world who you would give your life for is actually the same person that you hate the most.
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Nanny: People who eavesdrop seldom hear good of themselves.
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Tommy Boy: Every dog has his day.
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Josephine: Sometimes people don't know what they know.
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Josephine: Well, there's always a second murder. Someone who knows something is bumped off before they can reveal what they know.
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Charles Hayward: Now, your grandfather has just died.
Eustace: A good thing, really. It's one less capitalist.
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Charles Hayward: They do share one or two traits. Vanity. A distorted morality. A lack of empathy. And murderers tend to feel that they are above the rules and laws that govern ordinary mortals.
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Sophia de Haviland: Grandfather said fortunes don't last if they get split between the weak members of a family. They should be concentrated in the hands of the strong.
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Lady Edith: Well always leave a party at its height when you're most enjoying it.
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Josephine: But in some books, person after person is killed. You end by spotting the murderer because he or she is practically the only person left. We must see what happens next.
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Josephine: I hate stupid people. They're useless, apart from dying during wars like Grandpapa used to say.
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[first lines]
Newsreel Announcer: Death of a legend. It is with sorrow that the country learned this week of the death of Aristide Leonides. Born in 1871, he arrived from Greece, aged 23, without a penny in his pocket, and opened his first restaurant that same year. The first hotel was ready for business not long after. His first wife, Lady Marcia de Haviland, died young. But Mr. Leonides wasn't alone at the end. He is survived by his young and lovely American widow, Brenda. Here is Mr. Leonides with his eldest granddaughter, Sophia. Friend or foe, no one could dispute Aristide Leonides was a colossus of his time.
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Chief Inspector Taverner: Charles, you have to understand, I'm under a lot of pressure here. There's politics involved here. It's sensitive. And with your past...
Charles Hayward: I'm sorry? My past? In Cairo. I was a diplomat.
Chief Inspector Taverner: Of course. And I am a duchess.
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Charles Hayward: May I ask you a blunt question?
Lady Edith: They're the only interesting kind.
Charles Hayward: What's wrong with people in this house?
Lady Edith: It is a blunt question indeed.
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Sophia de Haviland: Hello, Charles.
Charles Hayward: Sophia.
Lady Edith: How do you two know one another?
Sophia de Haviland: We met in Egypt, when I was out there with Sotheby's. He saved my life. Didn't you, Charles?
Charles Hayward: Well, her horse bolted on the way to the pyramids. I managed to stop it.
Lady Edith: Pfft!
[Both women chuckle]
Charles Hayward: I'm sorry?
Lady Edith: Sophia has never been run away with in her life. By a horse or anything else, come to that.
Sophia de Haviland: Charles likes to think he rescued me.
Lady Edith: Oh, the dear boy.
Crooked House Quotes
Extended Reading
