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You're the kind of child who might develop a passion for Bach.
I told him I hadn't at school. The one Bach piece I learnt made me feel I was being repeatedly hit on the head with a teaspoon. -- Dodie Smith
But her voice sounded wistful. It is one of her theories that a woman must never be jealous, never try to hold man against his will; but I could tell that she hadn't enjoyed seeing someone else bring father to life. -- Dodie Smith
She will want things to stay just as they are. She will never have the fun of hoping something wonderful and exiting may be just around the corner. -- Dodie Smith
People do look different with their eyes closed, their features seem so much more sculptured. -- Dodie Smith
But some characters in books are really real
Jane Austen's are; and I know those five Bennets at the opening of Pride and Prejudice, simply waiting to raven the young men at Netherfield Park, are not giving one thought to the real facts of marriage. -- Dodie Smith
I have found that sitting in a place where you have never sat before can be inspiring. -- Dodie Smith
How can a young man like to wear a beard? -- Dodie Smith
Thinking of death
strange, beautiful, terrible and a long way off
made me feel happier than ever. -- Dodie Smith
She is a famous artists' model who claims to have been christened Topaz - even if this is true there is no law to make a woman stick to a name like that. -- Dodie Smith
Contemplation seems to be about the only luxury that costs nothing. -- Dodie Smith
I glanced through another page in case I had missed something, and came to the description of Simon's face as he lay on the grass with his eyes closed. It gave me a stab in which happiness and misery were somehow a part of each other. -- Dodie Smith
Things you let yourself imagine happening, never do happen. -- Dodie Smith
I have really sinned. I am going to pause now, and sit here on the mound repenting in deepest shame ... -- Dodie Smith
Art could state very little - it's whole business is to evoke responses. -- Dodie Smith
Perhaps if I make myself write I shall find out what is wrong with me. -- Dodie Smith
I decided that it was like the difference between the beautiful old Godsend graves and the new ones open to receive coffins (which I never can bear to look at); that time takes the ugliness and horror out of death and turns it into beauty. -- Dodie Smith
Ah, but you're the insidious type
Jane Eyre with of touch of Becky Sharp. A thoroughly dangerous girl. -- Dodie Smith
She is a girl who cannot walk her troubles off, or work them off; she is a girl to sit around and glare. -- Dodie Smith
Certain unique books seem to be without forerunners or successors as far as their authors are concerned. Even though they may profoundly influence the work of other writers, for their creator they're complete, not leading anywhere. -- Dodie Smith
I suppose the best kind of spring morning is the best weather God has to offer. -- Dodie Smith
It is odd how different a house feels when one is alone in it. -- Dodie Smith
It's odd how different a house feels when one is alone in it. It makes it easier to think rather private thoughts ... -- Dodie Smith
Am I really admitting that my sister is determined to marry a man she has only seen once and doesn't much like the look of? It is half real and half pretense - and I have an idea that it is a game most girls play when they meet an eligible young men. They just ... wonder. -- Dodie Smith
I have noticed that rooms which are extra clean feel extra cold -- Dodie Smith
I couldn't make it out - why you ever let me, I mean. I understand now. Things like that happen when you're in love with the wrong person. Worse things. Things you never forgive yourself for. -- Dodie Smith
I think it [religion] is an art, the greatest one; an extension of the communion all the other arts attempt. -- Dodie Smith
Sometimes [the expression] old age has a kind of harrowing beauty. But elderly - ugh! -- Dodie Smith
I leaned against the carved banisters and listened to the music and felt quite different from any way I have ever felt before
softer, very beautiful and as if a great many men were in love with me and I might very easily be in love with them. -- Dodie Smith
I found it quite easy to carry on a casual conversation it was as if my real feelings were down fathoms deep in my mind and what we said was just a feathery surface spray. -- Dodie Smith
A loss of sensibility follows a loss of innocence, at once a penalty and a compensation. -- Dodie Smith
Like many other much-loved humans, they believed that they owned their dogs, instead of realizing that their dogs owned them. -- Dodie Smith
When things mean a very great deal to you, exciting anticipation just isn't safe. -- Dodie Smith
Then I told myself that as I never gave the Church a thought when I was feeling happy, I could hardly expect it to do anything for me when I wasn't. You can't get insurance money without paying in premiums. -- Dodie Smith
I could look at stationers' shops forever and ever. -- Dodie Smith
I felt as I did once when Rose had very bad toothache - that it was callous of me to be so separate from the pain, that just being sorry for suffering people isn't enough. -- Dodie Smith
I am a restlessness inside a stillness inside a restlessness. -- Dodie Smith
The way one's mind can dash about just while one opens a window. -- Dodie Smith
Just to be in love seemed the most blissful luxury I had ever known. The thought came to me that perhaps it is the loving that counts, not the being loved in return
that perhaps true loving can never know anything but happiness. For a moment I felt that I had discovered a great truth. -- Dodie Smith
The pictures are postcard reproductions of Old Masters. She has lots of metal animals about an inch long, little wooden shoes, painted boxes only big enough to hold stamps. -- Dodie Smith
Now, carols are always beautiful, but if you are sad they can make you feel sadder. (There are some people who always find beauty makes them feel sadder, which is a very mysterious thing.) -- Dodie Smith
said, "because he was at the British Museum. -- Dodie Smith
It made no difference. Just to be in love
seemed the most blissful luxury I had ever known. The thought came to me that perhaps it is the loving that counts, not the being loved in return - that perhaps true loving can never know anything but true happiness. -- Dodie Smith
As she only cries about once a year I really ought to have gone over and comforted her, but I wanted to set it all down here. I begin to see that writers are liable to become callous. -- Dodie Smith
But it is always dreadful when the pictures in front of one's eyes become meaningless and the real word is there instead and seems meaningless, too. -- Dodie Smith
I'm convinced England's overflowing with eccentric people, places, happenings. Indeed, you might say eccentricity's normal in England. -- Dodie Smith
And at last father flung the rug off as if it were hampering him and strode over to the table saying, 'cocoa, cocoa!'
it might have been the most magnificent drink in the world; which, personally, I think it is. -- Dodie Smith
It came to me that Hyde Park has never belonged to London - that it has always been , in spirit, a stretch of countryside; and that it links the Londons of all periods together most magically - by remaining forever unchanged at the heart of a ever-changing town. -- Dodie Smith
The table was a pool of candlelight -- so bright that the rest of the room seemed almost black, with the faces of the family portraits floating in the darkness. -- Dodie Smith
What is this insurmountable barrier round him? What's it made of? Where did it come from? -- Dodie Smith
Was he again
I had never forgotten that overheard phrase of Eve's
being kind to be cruel? I only knew I had been given back enough to live on. And dimly, dimly, I began to see a new Last Act to crown my play. -- Dodie Smith
What with books and chocolate, there's not much else you could have in it, is there? -- Dodie Smith
Is it wrong for me to feel so happy? Perhaps I ought even to feel guilty? No. I didn't make it happen, and it can't hurt anyone but me. Surely I have a right to my joy. For as long as it lasts ... -- Dodie Smith
Oh I daresay she can't help it - she's one of the women who oughn't be loved too kindly when they are some primitive desire for brutality makes them try to provoke it. -- Dodie Smith
I could never explain how the image and the reality merge, and how they somehow extend and beautify each other. -- Dodie Smith
Cruel blows of fate call for extreme kindness in the family circle. -- Dodie Smith
I know all about the facts of life, and I don't think much of them. -- Dodie Smith
Is that branch worrying you?" Simon asked her. "Would you like to change places? I hope you wouldn't because your hair looks so nice against the leaves -- Dodie Smith
I should rather like to tear these last pages out of the book. Shall I? No-a journal ought not to cheat. -- Dodie Smith
With stories even a page can take me hours, but the truth seems to flow out as fast as I can get it down. -- Dodie Smith
Deep down, in some vague, mixed way I had been letting myself hope that he didn't really care for her, that it was me he loved and that kissing me would have made him realise it ... -- Dodie Smith
I could marry the Devil himself if he had some money. -- Dodie Smith
Was I the only woman in the world who, at my age - and after a lifetime of quite rampant independence - still did not quite feel grown up? -- Dodie Smith
Perhaps watching someone you love suffer can teach you even more than suffering yourself can. -- Dodie Smith
It was so nice that Simon was here for it - tell him I enjoyed every minute - ' it was glorious writing that - almost like telling him I was glad he'd kissed me. But after I'd posted the letter I was worried in case he guessed what I'd meant. -- Dodie Smith
In addition, I think religion has a chance of a look-in whenever the mind craves solace in music or poetry
in any form of art at all. Personally, I think it is an art, the greatest one; an extension of the communication all the other arts attempt. -- Dodie Smith
The family - that dear octopus from whose tentacles we never quite escape, nor, in our inmost hearts, ever quite wish to. -- Dodie Smith
For I know I shall be interrupted
I shall want to be, really, because life is too exciting to sit still for long. -- Dodie Smith
Why is summer mist romantic and autumn mist just sad? -- Dodie Smith
And though I cannot honestly say I would ever turn my back on any luxury that I could come by, I do feel there is something a bit wrong in it. Perhaps that makes it all the more enjoyable. -- Dodie Smith
Of course, he sees creation as discovery. I mean, everything is already created, by the first cause
call it God if you like; everything is already there to be found. -- Dodie Smith
They said this flat was converted but I think its still heathen -- Dodie Smith
I like seeing people when they can't see me. -- Dodie Smith
I only want to write. And there's no college for that except life. -- Dodie Smith
At least we're companions in misfortune -- Dodie Smith
Incidentally, I never felt less brisk in my life, because being looked at like that makes a person feel dizzy. -- Dodie Smith
I believe it is customary to get one's washing over first in baths and bask afterwards; personally, I bask first. I have discovered that the first few minutes are the best and not to be wasted
my brain always seethes with ideas and life suddenly looks much better than did. -- Dodie Smith
Then we danced the tune through again, without saying one word - indeed, we never spoke all the time we were dancing. I can't remember that I even thought. I seemed to move with a pleasure that was mindless. -- Dodie Smith
Death is too much to ask of the living. -- Dodie Smith
My hand is very tired but I want to go on writing. I keep resting and thinking. All day I have been two people - the me imprisoned in yesterday and the me out here on the mound; and now there is a third me trying to get in - the me in what is going to happen next. -- Dodie Smith
Even a broken heart doesn't warrant a waste of good paper. -- Dodie Smith
There is something revolting about the way girls' minds so often jump to marriage long before they jump to love. -- Dodie Smith
How I wish I lived in a Jane Austen novel! -- Dodie Smith
I wonder if there isn't a catch about having plenty of money? Does it eventually take the pleasure out of things? -- Dodie Smith
I'm wondering. Shall we say its perfect for the sea and the sunlight - and the other Rose is perfect for candlelight? And perhaps what's most perfect of all is to find there are several Roses? -- Dodie Smith
Perhaps what you call conventionality, I call decency. -- Dodie Smith
Mr. Dearly wasn't exactly handsome but he had the kind of face you don't get tired of. -- Dodie Smith
I shouldn't think even millionaires could eat anything nicer than new bread and real butter and honey for tea. -- Dodie Smith
I love you, I love you, I love you. ~Cassandra
-- Dodie Smith
I stood there ringing the bell and banging on the door, feeling I could make someone be there, knowing all the time that I couldn't. -- Dodie Smith
Miserable people cannot afford to dislike each other -- Dodie Smith
There used to be two of us always on the look-out for life, talking to Miss Blossom at night, wondering, hoping; two Bronte-Jane Austen girls, poor but spirited, two Girls of Godsend Castle. -- Dodie Smith
The Devil's out of fashion. -- Dodie Smith
I wanted so terribly to be good to him. -- Dodie Smith
Topaz is beautiful - largely because of the strangeness of her face. -- Dodie Smith
I had found out in that glittering corridor off the ballroom that being with him could be more painful than being away from him. -- Dodie Smith
No, that was my privilege. -- Dodie Smith
And suddenly all the puppies were her puppies; she was their mother - just as Pongo had felt he was their father. -- Dodie Smith
Only the margin left to write on now. I love you, I love you, I love you. -- Dodie Smith
It's a beautiful sight to see good dancers doing simple steps. It's a painful sight to see beginners doing complicated patterns. -- Dodie Smith
Walking down Belmotte was the oddest sensation
every step took us deeper into the mist until at last it closed over our heads. It was like being drowned in the ghost of water. -- Dodie Smith
I wanted to know more about the young ... strange that though they laughed so loud, they so seldom smiled. Perhaps laughter was involuntary whereas smiling was part of an attitude to life. -- Dodie Smith
My God - it's a green child!" said the American. "What is this place - the House of Usher? -- Dodie Smith
And I suspect that, to the eyes of love, love shows. I knew about you as well as about myself, almost from the beginning. -- Dodie Smith
I heard Molly say, 'Our Mouse is a hundred miles away.' But I wasn't as far away as that; I was in a dimly lit street somewhere in Hampstead. -- Dodie Smith
Long prayers are like nagging. -- Dodie Smith
Prayer's a very tricky business. -- Dodie Smith
Oh, comfortable cocoa! -- Dodie Smith
If you love people, you take them on trust. -- Dodie Smith
Ham with mustard is a meal of glory -- Dodie Smith
Noble deeds and hot baths are the best cures for depression. -- Dodie Smith
I don't want to miss anything. -- Dodie Smith
Stew's so comforting on a rainy day. -- Dodie Smith
I wasn't merely remembering, it seemed to be trapped inside my eyelids. -- Dodie Smith
Truthfulness so often goes with ruthlessness. -- Dodie Smith
It is the still, yellow kind of afternoon when one is apt to get stuck in a dream if one sits very quiet -- Dodie Smith
The vague expression was gone from his eyes - I had a feeling it was gone forever. -- Dodie Smith
Oh, it is wonderful to wake up in the morning with things to look forward to! -- Dodie Smith
I write this sitting in the kitchen sink. -- Dodie Smith
I have noticed that when things happen in one's imaginings, they never happen in one's life, so I am curbing myself. -- Dodie Smith
The tea was a comfort - and by that time I more than needed comfort. -- Dodie Smith
It is rather exciting to write by moonlight. -- Dodie Smith
Once I really looked at the sky, I wanted to go on looking; it seemed to draw me towards it and make me listen hard, though there was nothing to listen to, not so much as a twig was stirring. -- Dodie Smith
Simon: You always were wise beyond your years.
Cassandra: No I wasn't. I used to be consciously naive. -- Dodie Smith
Still, looking through the old volumes was soothing, because thinking of the past made the present seem a little less real. -- Dodie Smith
While I have been writing I have lived in the past, the light of it has been all around me ... -- Dodie Smith
Your pain and anger will pass, but the guilt would remain with you for always. -- Dodie Smith
Oh, wise young judge. -- Dodie Smith
I wish I could find words
serious, beautiful words
to describe it in the afternoon sunlight; the more I strive for them, the more they utterly elude me. -- Dodie Smith
He laughed a little, in an odd, nervous kind of way. Because if I don't get going soon, the whole impetus may die
and if that happens, well, I really shall consider a long, restful plunge into insanity. Sometimes the abyss yawns very attractively. -- Dodie Smith
Extreme happiness invites religion almost as much as extreme misery. -- Dodie Smith
Father says hot water can be as stimulating as an alcoholic drink and though I never come by one ... I can well believe it. -- Dodie Smith
Well, my paper has asked me to do a series: Lives of the Great Musicians, reading time 2 minutes. -- Dodie Smith
And no bathroom on earth will make up for marrying a bearded man you hate. -- Dodie Smith
...[H]e's so good and good people are usually happy. But do happy things happen to the good, or can the good make happiness out of unhappiness? -- Dodie Smith
I could see he was nervous; at least, I thought I could, but then it struck me how little I know of him, or of Topaz or Rose or anyone in the world, really, except myself. -- Dodie Smith
It isn't a bit of use my pretending I'm not crying, because I am ... Pause to mop up. Better now.
Perhaps it would really be rather dull to be married and settled for life. Liar! It would be heaven. -- Dodie Smith
It can't be immoral to love anyone -- as long as one doesn't hurt anyone by it. -- Dodie Smith
When I read a book, I put in all the imagination I can, so that it is almost like writing the book as well as reading it - or rather, it is like living it. It makes reading so much more exciting, but I don't suppose many people try to do it. -- Dodie Smith
All I really want to write about is what happened just before he left. But if I let myself start with that I might forget some of the things which came first. And every word he said is of deepest value to me. -- Dodie Smith
But the happiness you hoped to win for me will never be mine. -- Dodie Smith
He can be so appreciative of all forms of art, but so matter-of-fact and unemotional about it. -- Dodie Smith
Never have I felt so separate from her. And I regret to say that there were moments when my deep and loving pity for her merged into a desire to kick her fairly hard. -- Dodie Smith
I still didn't believe him. And for the moment, I didn't much care one way or the other. My whole mind had swung back to Simon. -- Dodie Smith
What a tiny list of friends I have! All my fault. I less and less want to see people. -- Dodie Smith
Oh, I have just had an idea - after tea I shall attack myself with sandpaper. -- Dodie Smith
I was wandering around as usual, in my unpleasantly populated sub-conscious ... -- Dodie Smith
God - it's merely shorthand for where we come from, where we're going and what it's all about -- Dodie Smith
I was so happy that I wanted to be kind to everyone in the world. -- Dodie Smith
There's nothing more, except that I usually sit down until the flames die down and try to think myself back into the past. -- Dodie Smith
I really am just as discontented, but I don't seem to notice it so much. -- Dodie Smith
Topaz was wonderfully patient - but sometimes I wonder if it is not only patience, but also a faint resemblance to cows. -- Dodie Smith
Americans do seem to say things which make the English notice England. -- Dodie Smith
It was a rather dreadful thought but somehow comforting. -- Dodie Smith
It seemed an awful waste that we weren't in love with each other. -- Dodie Smith
As long as I live I shall remember that silent minute. -- Dodie Smith
So many of the loveliest things in England are melancholy. -- Dodie Smith
It was wonderful, of course
ham with mustard is a meal of glory. -- Dodie Smith
Surely I could give him
a sort of contentment ...
That isn't enough to give. Not for the giver. -- Dodie Smith
And they are like a drug, one needs them oftener and oftener and has to make them more and more exciting - until at last one's imagination won't work at all. -- Dodie Smith
The thought was horrible, yet fascinating. -- Dodie Smith