A continued atmosphere of hectic passion is very trying if you haven't got any of your own.

— Dorothy L. Sayers

A facility for quotation covers the absence of original thought.

— Dorothy L. Sayers

… After all, it isn't really difficult to write books. Especially if you either write a rotten story in good English or a good story in rotten English, which is as far as most people seem to get nowadays.

— Dorothy L. Sayers

A man once asked me ... how I managed in my books to write such natural conversation between men when they were by themselves. Was I, by any chance, a member of a large, mixed family with a lot of male friends? I replied that, on the contrary, I was an only child and had practically never seen or spoken to any men of my own age till I was about twenty-five. "Well," said the man, "I shouldn't have expected a woman (meaning me) to have been able to make it so convincing." I replied that I had coped with this difficult problem by making my men talk, as far as possible, like ordinary human beings. This aspect of the matter seemed to surprise the other speaker; he said no more, but took it away to chew it over. One of these days it may quite likely occur to him that women, as well as men, when left to themselves, talk very much like human beings also.

— Dorothy L. Sayers

A marriage of two independent and equally irritable intelligences seems to me reckless to the point of insanity.

— Dorothy L. Sayers

And upon his return, Gherkins, who had always considered his uncle as a very top-hatted sort of person, actually saw him take from his handkerchief-drawer an undeniable automatic pistol. It was at this point that Lord Peter was apotheoses from the state of Quite Decent Uncle to that of Glorified Uncle

— Dorothy L. Sayers

At present, we have no clear grasp of the principle that every man should do the work for which he is fitted by nature!

— Dorothy L. Sayers

Books... are like lobster shells, we surround ourselves with 'em, then we grow out of 'em and leave 'em behind, as evidence of our earlier stages of development.

— Dorothy L. Sayers

But if you were investigating a crime,” said Lady Waltham, “you’d have to begin by the usual things, I suppose — finding out what the person had been doing, and who’d been to call, and looking for a motive, wouldn’t you?”“Oh, yes,” said Lord Peter, “but most of us have such dozens of motives for murderin’ all sorts of inoffensive people. There’s lots of people I’d like to murder, wouldn’t you?”“Heaps,” said Lady Waltham.

— Dorothy L. Sayers

But that's men all over ... Poor dears, they can't help it. They haven't got logical minds.

— Dorothy L. Sayers