Precocious Quotes

“I had kind of a midlife crisis at twenty which probably doesn’t augur well for my longevity”
― David Foster Wallace

“No matter how tiny you look, you can lead huge men if you have what the huge men don't have.”
― Michael Bassey Johnson

“Sure...the boy was precocious. But having been precocious himself, Lowell was never wowed by teenagers who could recite the periodic table of elements or whatever. He was on to them. Precocious was not the same as smart, much less the same as wise, and the perfect opposite of informed - since the more you prided yourself on knowing the less you listened and the less you learned. Worse, with application less glibly gifted peers often caught up with or overtook prodigies by early adulthood, and meanwhile the kid to whom everything came so effortlessly never mastered the grind of sheer hard work.”
― Lionel Shriver, The Mandibles: A Family, 2029–2047

“How could I tell Clarence that finding another dead body was anything but dreadful? On the contrary: it was thrilling; it was exciting; it was exhilarating, it was invigorating; to say nothing of electrifying and above all, satisfying.
How could I tell the dear man that murder made me feel so gloriously alive?”
― Alan Bradley, Thrice the Brinded Cat Hath Mew'd

“To see Ramses, at fourteen months, wrinkling his brows over a sentence like 'The theology of the Egyptians was a compound of fetishism, totem-ism and syncretism' was a sight as terrifying as it was comical. Even more terrifying was the occasional thoughtful nod the child would give.
...the room was dark except for one lamp, by whose light Emerson was reading. Ramses, in his crib, contemplated the ceiling with rapt attention. It made a pretty little family scene, until one heard what was being said. '...the anatomical details of the wounds, which included a large gash in the frontal bone, a broken malar bone and orbit, and a spear thrust which smashed off the mastoid process and struck the atlas vertebra, allow us to reconstruct the death scene of the king.' ... From the small figure in the cot came a reflective voice. 'It appeaws to me that he was muwduwed.'...' a domestic cwime.'...'One of the ladies of the hawem did it, I think.' I seized Emerson by the arm and pushed him toward the door, before he could pursue this interesting suggestion.”
― Elizabeth Peters, The Curse of the Pharaohs

“I know what dissipate means, Arty. I'm not three, for heaven's sake.”
― Eoin Colfer

“Have you ever wondered, Dogger," I asked, "if wickedness is a chemical state?"
"Indeed I have, Miss Flavia," he said. "I have sometimes thought of little else.”
― Alan Bradley, Thrice the Brinded Cat Hath Mew'd

“Young people today seem to be positively pickled in gin.”
― Dorothy L. Sayers, Hangman's Holiday: A Collection of Short Mysteries

“No outsider was allowed in the station except wives of the higher officers and a few friends. Where was Harriet in all this excitement? In the station, taking the train with the troops to Piraeus.”
― Mary Allsebrook, Born to Rebel: The Life of Harriet Boyd Hawes