Do you want the good tea or the bad tea

Razor: Do you want the good tea or the bad tea

Bill: What’s the difference?
Razor: I call one “good” and the other “bad.”
Bill: ...I’ll take the good one.
Razor: Excellent. A positive attitude will help with the horror to come!
Bill: What horror?!
Razor: Mainly the tea.

A wonderful line from “World Enough and Time”, last week’s Doctor Who. There is something about tea which lends itself to humour far more than coffee. Here are a few snippets, quotations about tea which are amusing:

“Arthur blinked at the screens and felt he was missing something important. Suddenly he realized what it was. "Is there any tea on this spaceship?" he asked.”

― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“My hour for tea is half-past five, and my buttered toast waits for nobody.”

― Wilkie Collins, The Woman in White

“Dad was at his desk when I opened the door, doing what all British people do when they're freaked out: drinking tea.”

― Rachel Hawkins, Demonglass

“As far as her mom was concerned, tea fixed everything. Have a cold? Have some tea. Broken bones? There's a tea for that too. Somewhere in her mother's pantry, Laurel suspected, was a box of tea that said, 'In case of Armageddon, steep three to five minutes'.”

― Aprilynne Pike, Illusions


“What kind of tea do you want?"
"There´s more than one kind of tea?...What do you have?"
"Let´s see... Blueberry, Raspberry, Ginseng, Sleepytime, Green Tea, Green Tea with Lemon, Green Tea with Lemon and Honey, Liver Disaster, Ginger with Honey, Ginger Without Honey, Vanilla Almond, White Truffle Coconut, Chamomile, Blueberry Chamomile, Decaf Vanilla Walnut, Constant Comment and Earl Grey."
-"I.. Uh...What are you having?... Did you make some of those up?”

― Bryan Lee O'Malley, Scott Pilgrim, Volume 1: Scott Pilgrim's Precious Little Life

"At Christmas, tea is compulsory. Relatives are optional.”

― Robert Godden

“Goblin tea resembles a nice cup of Earl Grey in much the same way that a catfish resembles the common tabby. They share a name, but one is a nice thing to curl up with on a rainy afternoon, and the other is found in the muck at the bottom of polluted rivers and has bits of debris sticking to it.”

― T. Kingfisher

“If there are no spots on a sugar cube then I’ve just put a dice in my tea.”

― Robert Rankin, The Antipope

“I looked at Judith. "This sounds strange, but I don't suppose you saw three mad women with a cauldron of boiling tea pass by this way?"

― Kate Griffin, The Midnight Mayor

“Want some tea?" she said.
"What?"
"I thought some tea might be nice. A nice cup of oolong. Want some?"
"But you just took my clothes off."
"Oh. All right, then, sex it is.”

― D.L. King, Stubborn as a Bull

“I think just a cup of tea...' There was something to be said for tea and a comfortable chat about crematoria.”

― Barbara Pym, Quartet in Autumn