Anansi Boys Quotes

“It begins, as most things begin, with a song.”

“Grahame Coats/Stoat: "Absatively."”

“The beast made the noise of a cat being shampooed, a lonely wail of horror and outrage, of shame and defeat.”

“The door opened.
“Don’t you knock?” asked Fat Charlie.
“No,” said the policeman. “We don’t, actually.””

““You, Charles. The police suspect you.”
“Yes,” said Fat Charlie. “Of course they do. It’s been that sort of a day.””

““I tell him how he can contact his brother.”
“Ahh,” said Mrs. Dunwiddy. She could disapprove with just that one syllable.”

“Spider said, “They do a really nice sort of noodly-stew thing here, by the way.”
“Are you sure we’re in Italy?”
“Not really.””

“He was having second thoughts about all this, something Spider found fairly disconcerting. Normally he didn’t even have first thoughts about things.”

““You’re no help,” he told the lime. This was unfair. It was only a lime; there was nothing special about it at all. It was doing the best it could.”

“That did not disturb Fat Charlie. It was England in the autumn; the sun was, by definition, something that only happened when it wasn’t cloudy or raining.”

“There’s another version of the story where they talk Anansi into the cookpot, too. The stories are all Anansi’s, but he doesn’t always come out ahead.”

““Grahame Coats. He wants me to pop in tomorrow.”
Spider said, “He’s a bastard.”
“So? You’re a bastard.”
“Different kind of bastard.””

“Ah well, she thought. Being dead is probably just like everything else in life: you pick some of it up as you go along, and you just make up the rest.”

“Nothing happened. Nothing continued to happen. More Nothing. The Return of Nothing. Son of Nothing. Nothing Rides Again. Nothing and Abbott and Costello meet the Wolfman...”

““It’s all right for you, you’re dead. You don't have to worry about these things.”
“You’re dead, too, love.”
“That is quite beside the point,” she said.”

““The ties of blood,” said Spider, “are stronger than water.”
“Water’s not strong,” objected Fat Charlie.
“Stronger than vodka, then. Or volcanoes. Or, or ammonia.””

“He did not ask himself why he was now so certain that everything would soon begin to improve. There was reality, and there was reality, and some things were more real than others.”

“Nothing good lasts forever, after all. Sooner or later, as Grahame Coats himself would have delighted in assuring you, even if your goose habitually lays golden eggs, it will still be cooked.”

“Together the man and the boy danced their way back up the sand to the house, singing a wordless song that they made up as they went along, which lingered in the air even after they had gone in for breakfast.”

“Spider was not particularly good at telling the truth. He regarded truth as fundamentally malleable, more or less a matter of opinion, and Spider was able to muster some pretty impressive opinions when he had to.”