Favourite Quotes, Lines and Sentences

 

 Words to make you think, laugh or cry





I’ve done a number of theme posts recently – see list in the tab above – and thinking about my 12 years and 2500 posts of blogging, I was struck with the simple idea of featuring  some favourite quotes – just sentences I liked in my reading. (Like a young Victorian miss with an album). I came up with the list below very quickly, and on another day would think of more or different ones, but I am very much hoping readers will suggest their own favourites. These are random – please make your contributions equally so. Lines to make you laugh, or cry, or think…

 

1)  When I wrote about Guy Cullingford’s 1950s book Conjuror’s Coffin I said this: I was unexpectedly touched by this line near the end about a dying man:

‘Is there anything I can do for you?’

‘… five bob each way… on Redemption..?’

This scene takes place outside the real-life lovely church of St Patrick’s in Soho Square in London. Redemption is always possible.


2)  Eva Ibbotson has a character in her Madensky Square say this in her hat shop, as illo above:

She wants a better world for the poor and oppressed — and she wants to look pretty while she’s getting it — and don’t we all?

Which I often think could be the motto for Clothes in Books.

(Eva Ibbotson is also responsible for a Guardian piece that I pull out and send around from time to time – it’s one of the nicest true stories you could ever read, it’s about libraries and refugees, and is intensely charming. Thanks also to blogfriend Susanna Tayler, who first pointed it out to me.)

 

3 This line from James Thurber’s Southern Gothic parody will never not make me laugh:

Old Nate Birge… was chewing on a splinter of wood and watching the moon come up lazily out of the old cemetery in which nine of his daughters were lying, only two of whom were dead.

In part because I like writing about graves and graveyards, so am forever quoting it. Recently here and here, also in my Guardian article about digging up bodies.

 

4 Miss Pym Disposes by Josephine Tey is one of my favourite crime books, and I have written about it extensively – for example in my recent post on Motives, and also in an essay for the Edgar-nominated Murder in the Closet. (Why yes I did go to New York for the Edgar ceremony, thank you for asking). But there is one (fairly irrelevant) moment in it that I always enjoy and I don’t think have mentioned. One of the pupils at the teacher training college is explaining beef between 2 x students to Lucy Pym

‘There is also some personal reason for the quarrel, I understand. Something about abused hospitality.’

‘You mean that one went home for the holidays with the other and – misbehaved?’ Visions of vamped lover, stolen spoons and cigarette burns on the furniture ran through Lucy’s too vivid imagination.

‘Oh no it happened more than 200 years ago. In the deep snow, and there was a massacre.’

The two young women concerned are called Campbell and Macdonald: the shadow of Glencoe reaches far.

 


5 After I described a visit to the grave of WB Yeats in Co Sligo in Ireland, an online comment was

‘Nothing says fun holiday outing like a visit to a dead poet’s grave.’

Indeed. Now our family motto.

 

6 From Graham Greene’s The End of the Affair:

Death never mattered at those times—in the early days I even used to pray for it: the shattering annihilation that would prevent for ever the getting up, the putting on of clothes, the watching her torch trail across to the opposite side of the Common like the tail-light of a slow car driving away.

 

7 A very recent addition – from Ferdia Lennon’s Glorious Exploits:

…and it seems to me a soft and delicate thing.

‘He believed the world a wounded thing that can only be healed by story.’

 



8 Pursuit of Love, Nancy Mitford, the foundation of the blog:

Louisa was married in the spring. Her wedding dress was short to the knee and had a train, as was the hideous fashion then. [Her sister] Jassy got very worked up about it.

‘So unsuitable.’

‘Why, Jassy?’

‘To be buried in, I mean. Women are always buried in their wedding dresses aren’t they? Think of your poor old dead legs sticking out.’

I always had a very clear picture of that wedding dress, and ‘Your poor old dead legs’ is a phrase that will never not make me laugh. And I started this blog to illustrate it.

9 Not a novel, not about clothes, just my all-time favourite line from a recipe, from Peg Bracken’s I Hate to Cook book:

Add the flour, salt, paprika and mushrooms, stir, and let it cook five minutes while you light a cigarette and stare sullenly at the sink.

 

10 Bridget Jones, forever nailing Christmas in your 20s, and another one I bring out every year:

Tuesday 3 January: 9am. Ugh. Cannot face thought of going to work… It seems wrong and unfair that Christmas, with its stressful and unmanageable financial and emotional challenges, should first be forced upon one wholly against one’s will, then rudely snatched away just when one is starting to get into it. Was really beginning to enjoy the feeling that normal service was suspended and it was OK to lie in bed as long as you want, put anything you fancy into your mouth, and drink alcohol whenever it should chance to pass your way, even in the mornings. Now suddenly we are all supposed to snap into self-discipline like lean teenage greyhounds.

 

Please bring out a favourite quote in the comments below – no guidelines, no rules, no themes - just a sentence or two that you like, or pops into your mind on a regular basis.

 

 

Comments

  1. What an excellent idea for post, Moira! I absolutely love it. And thanks for sharing these quotes. It makes me want to do some (re)reading... At any rate, here is one I love. It's from Henning Mankell's Mind's Eye. In this scene, Janek Mitter is on trial for the murder of his wife Eva. He was very drunk the night of her death, but he claims he didn't kill his wife. The prosecutor asks him how he knows that, since he was so drunk. Here is Mitter's reply:

    '‘I know I didn’t kill her; because I didn’t kill her. Just as I’m sure that you know you are not wearing frilly knickers today, because you aren’t. Not today.’

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    1. Oh that's brilliant Margot, thanks - totally out of left field!

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  2. I love collecting quotes from my books. One of my all-time favorite exchanges comes from Strong Poison by Dorothy L. Sayers:

    (Harriet Vane) "But, by the way, you're bearing in mind, aren't you, that I've had a lover?"
    (Lord Peter) "Oh, yes. So have I, if it comes to that. In fact, several. It's the sort of thing that might happen to anybody. I can produce quite good testimonials. I'm told I make love rather nicely--only I'm at a disadvantage at the moment. One can't be very convincing at the other end of a table with a bloke looking in at the door."

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  3. (I am also "Anonymous" above with Sayers, by the way)

    Another favorite describe me and bookstores quite nicely:

    The trouble with bookshops is that they are as bad as pubs. You start with one and then you drift to another, and before you know where you are you are on a gigantic book-binge.
    Bodies in a Bookshop —R. T. Campbell

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    1. Also nice, thanks Bev. I always remember the Dorothy Parker poem where she is discussing the ways of men: 'Some men, some men cannot pass a bookshop'

      Not just men, as I think we know...

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  4. “Why it is that a garment which is honestly attractive in, say, 1910 should be honestly ridiculous a few years later and honestly charming again a few years later still is one of those things which are not satisfactorily to be explained and are therefore jolly and exciting and an addition to the perennial interest of life.”
    ― Margery Allingham, The Fashion in Shrouds

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  5. In Louise Penny's book, Bury Your Dead, she quotes from a blessing at the wedding of Armand and Reine-Marie Gamache:

    "Now there is no more loneliness."

    While claimed to be from an Apache wedding blessing it is from a novel written by a white author featuring the Apache culture but is not a part of Apache tradition.

    I still love the blessing, especially this line.




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    1. Oh that is very nice, thanks Bill. A short and lovely thought.

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  6. For some reason which I cannot fully explain, I have always loved this sentence (obviously by Virginia Woolf): "And then, thought Clarissa Dalloway, what a morning — fresh as if issued to children on a beach." I think there is something about the word "issued" in this context that makes the sentence stand out for me and somehow seem as fresh as the morning.

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    1. Love it, that is beautiful - and I particularly like it that you 'cannot fully explain' - they're the best ones...

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  7. I read this aged about 14, slightly horrified me as my mum was about 43 at the time!
    "Ellen O'Hara was 32 and by the standards of the day, she was a middle aged woman"
    Gone With The Wind

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    1. Oh that is hilarious, I'm not surprised it stuck in your mind. thank goodness times have changed.

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  8. Re the poor old dead legs - the Nancy Mitford quote that has stuck in my head through the years is from ‘Love in a Cold Climate’. Louisa may not have made the best choice of wedding dress but at least she picked the right man, as witness Jassy and Victoria complaining that their two married sisters refuse to discuss sex with them except in the most general terms:

    “Linda says it’s not all it’s cracked up to be,” said Jassy, “and we don’t wonder when we think of Tony.”

    “But Louisa says, once you get used to it, it’s utter utter utter blissikins,” said Victoria, “and we DO wonder when we think of John.”
    Sovay

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    1. Oh yes, marvellous. Honestly those books are so full of wonderful lines.
      Also, Polly's wedding which The Times said
      "took place very quietly, owing to deep mourning, at Hampton Park" (all these little details arranged by Davey)....Somehow she had got herself a wedding dress (Did I recognize a ball dress of last season? No matter.) and was in a cloud of white tulle, and lilies of the valley, and joy....Polly simply floated along on waves of bliss, creating one of the most beautiful moments I have ever experienced.'
      How sad.

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  9. Peg Bracken often springs to my mind too. This, also from the I Hate To Cook Book: 'This book is for those of us who want to fold our big dishwater hands around a dry Martini instead of a wet flounder come the end of a long day.' And then there is Stayabed Stew: 'for those days when you're en negligee, en bed, with a murder story and a box of chocolates, or possibly a good case of the flu.' Chrissie

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    1. Lovely. She is full of splendid moments, great jokes - but also a lot really sensible advice.

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    2. Ooo, there it is again....the joy of luxuriating with a good mystery and box of chocolates!

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    3. Indeed - bound to appeal to my blog readers!

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  10. Well, of course, this sent me to the bookshelves to find and dust off my old Commonplace Book, which is full of wonderful bits from authors, but sadly neglected for too many years now. (Mostly collected in the 1980s and 90s!!) I'll content myself with sharing just a few....

    And then, because they were both Englishwomen and their hearts were somewhat broken, they turned back into the room and put on the kettle and made themselves a cup of tea.
    -Eva Ibbotson, A Song for Summer, 1997

    Lusa was alone, curled up in an armchair and reading furtively--the only way a farmer's wife may read.
    -Barbara Kingsolver, Prodigal Summer, 2000

    Not surprisingly, perhaps, I also found in my book the excerpt from The Fashion in Shrouds, from Lucy, above.

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    1. So glad to hear you kept a commonplace book - I always meant to, but the quotes I copied out were mixed up with shopping lists and suchlike. It is nice coming across the saved ones occasionally.
      Very nice choices, thank you.

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    2. Love that 'somewhat broken.' Chrissie

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  11. Well, as I mentioned recently I like the discussion of mathematics from Dark of the Moon:
    "To me mathematics means the activities of those mischievous lunatics A, B, and C. In my time they were always starting two trains at high speed from distant points to see where the trains would collide somewhere between. . . . And when the silly dopes weren't wrecking trains or computing the ages of their children without seeming to know how old the brats were, two of ‘em had a passion for pumping water out of a tank while the third mug pumped water into it."

    Not only is it an accurate parody of a certain style of math problems we have all encountered, there is something funny about John Dickson Carr of all people not getting the appeal of unrealistic problems.

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    1. Yes indeed, I remember your earlier comments well, and I like your analysis.
      I can remember our beloved maths teacher trying to explain why you needed to work out what happened if you filled the bath and emptied at the same time, and we were very resistant.
      Yes, nicely ironic.

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    2. Haha, how did your teacher try to motivate it?

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    3. I thought she was mistaken - she had a feeble try at saying 'supposing the bath was too hot and you wanted to let some out and add cold'. I think she should have embraced the abstract, and said it was to teach us useful methods even though the question makes no sense...
      I revered her, and this is a very rare criticism!

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  12. There are a couple of bits from The Unpleasantness at The Bellona Club that have stuck with me - first Marjorie Phelps describing Ann Dorland:
    "She has brains, you know. She'd run anything awfully well. But she isn't creative. And then, of course, so many of our little lot seem to be running love-affairs. And a continual atmosphere of hectic passion is very trying if you haven't got any of your own."

    And then Mr Murbles, as the deception involving the body is revealed:
    "Bless my soul," said Mr. Murbles. "Let us go at once. Really, this is most exciting. That is, I am profoundly grieved. I hope it is not as you say."

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    1. Nice. I would've put Bellona Club low down of my list of DLS, but reread it recently and was impressed, I enjoyed it a lot.

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  13. One of my favourites is Bertie Wooster, afraid that Madeleine Bassett is going to say something off-colour about Launcelot and Guinevere: "I stirred uneasily. I hoped she was going to keep it clean."

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  14. "She had known, really, that somewhere there had to be such a house. A house that smelled of vanilla and cinnamon and fresh-baked bread. A house with embroidered cushions tied to each carved pine chair and a canary as yellow as butter that sang and sang and sang. She had known too that such a house would have a cat with whiskers like cello strings which jumped on to your knee the moment you sat down.." ~ Eva Ibbotson

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    1. Oh lovely! Which book? I'm hoping one where she got what she wanted

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  15. There's a line from Excellent Women by Barbara Pym: 'I couldn't possibly recognise her from that description - "not pretty but quite a pleasant face"- most Englishwomen look like that, you know.'
    I felt *seen*, as Barbara Pym would not have put it.

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    1. Oh yes, very much so. B Pym really knew her stuff, and knew how to describe it.

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