Dorothea Phillips: Aunt Elsa

Quotes 

• Randi Wallace : You know, your book changed my life. I read the first chapter and I switched majors.

  Aunt Elsa : I hope it's got a couple of juicy murders in it. A bit of steamy sex wouldn't hurt, either.

  [reading the title of Ian's manuscript] 

  Julian Matheson : Let's see. "Fright and Fraud: Ethnobiocentric Morphogenesis of the Mephisto Fallacy." I doubt it.

  [to Ian] 

  Julian Matheson : Catchy title.

• Dad Matheson : I'm sure it's a cracking good read.

  Dr. Ian Matheson : Academics don't want a cracking good read, Dad. They want dull, stuffy, pompous books.

  Aunt Elsa : And you're just the man to give it to them.

• [reading the newspaper's account of a grisly murder] 

  Aunt Elsa : "The booksellers watch horrified as the man, dressed as a sea captain, impaled the publisher with a harpoon."

  Julian Matheson : "Then the drooling psychopathic lunatic jumped out the window and plunged screaming to his death below."

  Dr. Ian Matheson : Oh my God.

  Julian Matheson : Lose your appetite?

  Dr. Ian Matheson : Lost my publisher.

• Dr. Ian Matheson : You share the taste of the common reader. Maybe you can help me.

  Aunt Elsa : I'll try.

  Dr. Ian Matheson : How would Stephen King say this? "As the interstitial matrices of good and evil tend towards the unity of the ur-Mephistopheles, they transcend the nature of the Faust legend."

  Aunt Elsa : Hmm. Let me think. How about, "Blood dripped from her naked body and spread across the throat; her once lovely features hideously deformed by the rictus of death."

  Dr. Ian Matheson : It's useless.