Cabal Quotes

A blog dedicated to the Johannes Cabal books

[cabalquotes]

‘You can’t go leaving mesmerised women littering up the place,’ he snapped. ‘It’s, I don’t know, unhygienic.’

Johannes Cabal the Necromancer, Jonathan L Howard (via cabalquotes)

[cabalquotes]

Cabal looked at him as if realising his brother was actually a complete nincompoop. ‘No,’ he said. ‘This was long before I even knew there was a son. The father tried to kill me.’ ‘Before he killed himself?’ ‘After he killed himself. Really, Horst, this isn’t complicated.’

The Brothers Cabal, Jonathan L Howard (via cabalquotes)

[cabalquotes]

“‘Satan was nothing.’ Cabal muttered to himself. 'I spat in his eye.’ There was a short pause. 'Figuratively. I figuratively spat in his eye. I couldn’t really spit in his eye.’ Another pause. 'He was too tall.’”

Johannes Cabal the Fear Institute, Jonathan L Howard (via cabalquotes)

[cabalquotes]

“There had been no possibility that he had survived. His body had not tumbled into a foaming sea or into a clouded abyss from which he might later make an unexpected return through the good offices of kindly dolphins or giant eagles. Cabal had himself checked that all life was extinguished by searching for a pulse, looking for clouding on a mirror held to the corpse’s mouth, and by kicking repeatedly.”

The Brothers Cabal, Jonathan L Howard (via cabalquotes)

[cabalquotes]

"There was a knock at the door. It was Mr Bones. 'Say, boss, it's the boss,' he said. Cabal put his exercise book away and leaned back in his chair. 'You are making precisely no sense,' he said."

Johannes Cabal the Nectomancer, by Jonathan L Howard

[cabalquotes]

“‘Are you deliberately collecting animated heads, Johannes?’ he asked. Cabal frowned, then accepted the point. 'Not deliberately. It just happens.’”

The Brothers Cabal, Jonathan L Howard (via cabalquotes)

[cabalquotes]

‘You’ve had your warning, Cabal. Now, prepare to face the terrible arcane wrath of Maleficarus!’ Somewhere, a sheep bleated and quite ruined the effect.

Johannes Cabal the Necromancer, Jonathan L Howard (via cabalquotes)

[cabalquotes]

‘Why on Earth did you steal three dead popes?’ asked Cabal. ‘First, to make the Vatican very cross. That was funny. Second reason, delicious.’

Johannes Cabal the Fear Institute, Jonathan L Howard (via cabalquotes)

[cabalquotes]

“‘It’s a philosophical minefield!’ Cabal had a brief mental image of Aristotle walking halfway across an open field before unexpectedly disappearing in a fireball. Descartes and Nietzsche looked on appalled. He pulled himself together.”

Johannes Cabal the Necromancer, Jonathan L Howard (via cabalquotes)

[cabalquotes]

“Instead he gave Cabal his most professional pat on the shoulder. It was his best pat, the one that said, You have my most sincere albeit non-specific sympathies. It was all he could do.”

Johannes Cabal the Fear Institute, Jonathan L Howard (via cabalquotes)

[cabalquotes]

“It was a nice coffin, well finished and very comfortable, and he would hate to see its corners dashed and its surfaces scratched by a short career in stair tobogganing.”

The Brothers Cabal, Jonathan L Howard (via cabalquotes)

[cabalquotes]

Cabal regarded her with mild amusement. “Smile when you whisper,” he advised her. “You’re supposed to be flirting with me, if you recall?” She stared at him icily. Then suddenly her expression thawed and she smiled winsomely, her eyes dewy with romantic love. “Oh, sweetheart… somebody tried to kill you? Whosoever would do such a thing to my nimpty-bimpty snookums?” Cabal could not have been more horrified if she’d pulled off her face to reveal a gaping chasm of eternal night from which glistening tentacles coiled and groped. That had already happened to him once in his life, and he wasn’t keen to repeat the experience. “What?” he managed in a dry whisper. “Smile when you whisper,” she said, her expression fixed and blood-curdlingly coquettish. You’re supposed to be flirting with me, remember?” “Please don’t do that."

Johannes Cabal the Detective, Jonathan L Howard

[cabalquotes]

There was a short embarrassed pause in which Cabal wondered why they wouldn’t go away, and the couple desperately tried to formulate a polite plan for getting away.

Johannes Cabal the Detective, Jonathan L Howard (via cabalquotes)

[cabalquotes]

“He staggered a little, unsure whether he should drop to one knee because he’d been shot or because it was the dramatically correct thing to do. He did so anyway, to give himself something to do while he thought about it.”

The Brothers Cabal, Jonathan L Howard (via cabalquotes)

[cabalquotes]

It was all tremendously exciting and the nearest thing to fun she’d experienced since the Bishop of Onslow had tried exorcising her from his cathedral in 1737. She’d had one of her little chats with him, and then secreted the remains behind the organ pipes, where they had lain undisturbed for three decades until an organ mechanic happened upon them. Good times.

A Long Spoon, Jonathan L Howard

[cabalquotes]

“‘You don’t look well, if you don’t mind me saying so.’ 'Yes. Yes, I do,’ said Cabal, drawing on some inner reservoir of animosity. 'I’m always pale. I’m…’ Inspiration danced lithely out of grasp. 'A pale person.’”

Johannes Cabal the Necromancer, Jonathan L Howard (via cabalquotes)

[cabalquotes]

‘So,’ he said when it became apparent that his hard look was not doing all it might in humbling her, ‘you’re a necromancer.’ ‘So,’ she replied, ‘you’re a vampire.’ An awkward silence followed, if they had just met through the offices of a cryptic dating agency.

The Brothers Cabal, Jonathan L Howard