Dodie Smith Quotes

Perhaps if I make myself write I shall find out what is wrong with me.

Perhaps watching someone you love suffer can teach you even more than suffering yourself can.

I am a restlessness inside a stillness inside a restlessness.

I only want to write. And there's no college for that except life.

Truthfulness so often goes with ruthlessness.

Thinking of death-strange, beautiful, terrible and a long way off-made me feel happier than ever.

I think it [religion] is an art, the greatest one; an extension of the communion all the other arts attempt.

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.

My God - it's a green child!" said the American. "What is this place - the House of Usher?

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.

Rose doesn’t like the flat country, but I always did – flat country seems to give the sky such a chance.

Even a broken heart doesn't warrant a waste of good paper.

...I could never explain how the image and the reality merge, and how they somehow extend and beautify each other.

And no bathroom on earth will make up for marrying a bearded man you hate.

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.

There is something revolting about the way girls' minds so often jump to marriage long before they jump to love.

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.

... 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.

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.

Perhaps it would really be rather dull to be married and settled for life. Liar! It would be heaven.