Dodie Smith Quotes

If someone even mentions his name it is like a little present to me - and I long to mention it myself. I start subjects leading up to it, and then I feel myself going red. I keep swearing to myself not to speak to him again - and then an opportunity occurs and I jump at it!
Dodie Smith
Noble deeds and hot baths are the best cures for depression.
Dodie Smith
I have found that sitting in a place where you have never sat before can be inspiring.
Dodie Smith
Noble deeds and hot baths are the best cures for depression.
Dodie Smith
When I imagine changing places with her I get the feeling I do on finishing a novel with a brick-wall happy ending---I mean the kind of ending when you never think any more about the characters.
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
Dodie Smith
No, that was my privilege.
Dodie Smith
And what I thought most about was luxury. I had never realised before that it is more than just having things; it makes the very air feel different. And I felt different, breathing the air: relaxed, lazy, still sad but with the edge taken off the sadness. Perhaps the effect wears off in time, or perhaps you don't notice it if you are born to it, but it does seem to me that the climate of richness must always be a little dulling to the senses. Perhaps it takes the edge off joy as well as off sorrow.
Dodie Smith
That little glow of comfort lasted me right through the evening but was gone when I woke up next morning. Wakings are the worst times--almost before my eyes are open a great weight seems to roll on to my heart.
Dodie Smith
I wanted so terribly to be good to him.
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
...[P]erhaps it is the loving that counts, not the being loved in return---that perhaps true loving can never know anything but happiness.
Dodie Smith
Everything in the least connected with him has value for me; if someone even mentions his name it is like a little present to me--and I long to mention it myself, I start subjects leading up to it, and then feel myself going red. I keep swearing to myself not to speak of him again- and then an opportunity occurs and I jump at it.
Dodie Smith
Stew's so comforting on a rainy day.
Dodie Smith
...[I]f 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
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
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
The Devil's out of fashion.
Dodie Smith
Only half a page left now. Shall I fill it with 'I love you, I love you'-- like father's page of cats on the mat? No. Even a broken heart doesn't warrant a waste of good paper.
Dodie Smith
I have really sinned. I am going to pause now, and sit here on the mound repenting in deepest shame...
Dodie Smith
Your pain and anger will pass, but the guilt would remain with you for always.
Dodie Smith
It is rather exciting to write by moonlight.
Dodie Smith
And who says you always have to understand things? You can like them without understanding them -- like 'em better sometimes.
Dodie Smith
We were restless for ages...After a while I heard an owl hooting and calmed myself by thinking of it flying over the dark fields – and then I remembered it would be pouncing on mice. I love owls, but I wish God had made them vegetarian.
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
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
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
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.
Dodie Smith
I didn't make any mistake. I know that when he nearly asked me to marry him it was only on impulseIt is part if a follow-my-leader game of second-best we have all been playing - Rose with Simon, Simon with me, me with Stephen and Stephen, I suppose, with that detestable Leda Fox-Cotton. It isn't a very good game; the people you play it with are apt to get hurt.
Dodie Smith
Now, paper and pencils," said Miss Marcy, clapping her hands.Writing paper is scarce in this house, and I had no intention of tearing sheets out of this exercise book, which is a superb sixpenny one the Vicar gave me. In the end, Miss Marcy took the middle pages out of her library record, which gave us a pleasant feeling that we were stealing from the government, and then we sat round the table and elected her chairman.
Dodie Smith
A thousand pounds for clothes--when on thinks how long poor people could live on it! When one thinks how long we could live on it, for that matter!
Dodie Smith
There was a wonderful atmosphere of gentle age, a smell of flowers and beeswax, sweet yet faintly sour and musty; a smell that makes you feel very tender towards the past.
Dodie Smith
Oh, it was an artful place--it must make people who have money want to spend it madly!
Dodie Smith
My imagination longs to dash ahead and plan developments; but I have noticed that when things happen in one's imagination, they never happen in one's life.
Dodie Smith
A mist is rolling over the fields. Why is a summer mist romantic and autumn mist just sad?
Dodie Smith
Prayer's a very tricky business.
Dodie Smith
Noble deeds and hot baths are the best cures for depression.
Dodie Smith
I am surprised to see how much I have written; with stories even a page can take me hours, but the truth seems to flow out as fast as I can get it down. But words are very inadequate – anyway, my words are.
Dodie Smith
Did you think of anything when Miss Marcy said Scoatney Hall was being re-opened? I thought of the beginning of Pride and Prejudice – where Mrs. Bennet says 'Netherfield Park is let a last.' And then Mr. Bennet goes over to call on the rich new owner.
Dodie Smith
I go backwards and forwards, recapturing the past, wondering about the future—and, most unreasonably, I find myself longing for the past more than for the future.
Dodie Smith
I am not so sure I should like the facts of life, but I have got over the bitter disappointment I felt when I first heard about them,...
Dodie Smith
...I could never explain how the image and the reality merge, and how they somehow extend and beautify each other.
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
Cruel blows of fate call for extreme kindness in the family circle.
Dodie Smith
Even a broken heart doesn't warrant a waste of good paper.
Dodie Smith
I could marry the Devil himself if he had some money.
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
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
... there is something revolting about the way girls' minds so often jump to marriage long before they jump to love. And most of those minds are shut to what marriage really means.
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
There is something revolting about the way girls' minds so often jump to marriage long before they jump to love.
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
And no bathroom on earth will make up for marrying a bearded man you hate.
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
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
...he talked quite naturally while we ate — about the difficulty of finding words to describe the luminous mist, and why one has the desire to describe beauty."Perhaps it's an attempt to possess it," I said."Or be possessed by it; perhaps that's the same thing, really. I suppose it's the complete identification with beauty one's seeking."The mist grew brighter and brighter.
Dodie Smith
Rose doesn’t like the flat country, but I always did – flat country seems to give the sky such a chance.
Dodie Smith
He stood staring into the wood for a minute, then said: "What is it about the English countryside — why is the beauty so much more than visual? Why does it touch one so?"He sounded faintly sad. Perhaps he finds beauty saddening — I do myself sometimes. Once when I was quite little I asked father why this was and he explained that it was due to our knowledge of beauty's evanescence, which reminds us that we ourselves shall die. Then he said I was probably too young to understand him; but I understood perfectly.
Dodie Smith
My God - it's a green child!" said the American. "What is this place - the House of Usher?
Dodie Smith
I like seeing people when they can't see me.
Dodie Smith