The partner usually knows

Today´s Quotation comes from Elly Griffiths: The Outcast Dead.

But the partner usually does know, thinks Tim. Even if they don´t know what they know.

From The Outcast Deadby Ellie Griffiths

Real learning

Today´s Quotation comes from Elly Griffiths: Dying Fall.

“Oh, you weren’t stupid, Harry,” says Maureen kindly. “You just didn’t try at school.”

“I was the same,” says Cathbad. “I just wasn’t interested in the things they taught at school. I think real learning only begins after you stop being educated.”

This from the man who has two degrees and works at a university, thinks Nelson.

From Dying Fall by Ellie Griffiths

Study something useful!

Today´s Quotation comes from Elly Griffiths: Dying Fall.

Neither of her parents shares her passion for the past and her mother is often heard loudly lamenting that Ruth (such a clever girl at school) couldn’t have studied something more useful, like nursing or accountancy or fulltime religious mania.

From Dying Fall by Ellie Griffiths

You can´t go backward in time

Today´s Quotation comes from Elly Griffiths: Dying Fall.

She knows that you can’t go backwards, only forwards. Every archaelogist knows that. Time is a matter of layers, of strata, each firmly fixed in its own context. You can dig down through the layers but you can´t change the fact that time has passed and new strata have been laid on top.

From Dying Fall by Ellie Griffiths

What do cats do for humans?

Today´s Quotation comes from Elly Griffiths: Dying Fall.

Maybe humans need animals to help them understand the world. Certainly it’s hard to see what else cats do for humans, aside from looking cute and killing the odd mouse.

From Dying Fall by Ellie Grifftihs

Mobile phones tend to go missing

Today´s Quotation comes from Elly Griffiths: Dying Fall.

Bloody Dan, thinks Ruth. Why did he have to be so high tech? She takes photographs on digs with a digital camera but she also always does a sketch in her notebook and takes copious notes. And notebooks, unlike mobile phones, tend not to go missing.

From Dying Fall by Ellie Griffiths

Reading maps

Today´s Quotation comes from Elly Griffiths: The Crossing Places.

No-one is better at reading a map or a landscape than Erik. For him, hills and streams and villages are signposts pointing directly to the past. She remembers him saying to her when she first started his postgraduate course. ‘If you wanted to make a map of your sitting room for archaelogists of the future, what would be the most important thing?’

‘Er…making sure I have  a full inventory of objects.’

He had laughed. ‘No, no. Inventories are all very well in their place but they do not tell us how people lived, what was important to them, what they worshipped. No, the most important thing would be the direction. The way your chairs were facing. That would show archaeologists of the future that the most important object in the twenty-first century home was the large grey rectangle in the corner.’

From The Crossing Places by Ellie Griffiths