The Divine Gift of Purely Nonsensical Speech and Action

Fen sighed. “We are all becoming standardized and normal, Nigel. The divine gift of purely nonsensical speech and action is in atrophy. Would you believe it, a pupil of mine had the impertinence the other day to tick me off for reading him passages regarding the Fimble Fowl and the Quangle-Wangle as an illustration of pure poetic inventiveness; I put him in his place all right.” In the semi-darkness his eye became momentarily lambent with remembered satisfaction. “But there’s no eccentricity nowadays – none at all.”

— Edmund Crispin, 1944

From the book The Case of the Gilded Fly