Quotes from Stella Benson

There pass the trav'lling dreams, and these My soul adores

My love, I see you through my tears. No pity in your face I see. I have sailed far across the years; Stretch out, stretch out your arms to me.

Come home, come home, you million ghosts, The honest years shall make amends, The sun and moon shall be your hosts, The everlasting hills your friends.

Trees, skies, valleys mountains, seen through the rain-spotted windshield, were like a distorted, stippled landscape painted by a beginner who has not yet learned to wring living colour from his palette.

They were not spontaneous people. They were born with too great a love of words, a passion for drama at the expense of truth, and a habit of overweighting common life with romance.

Her grammar in moments of emergency always impressed Kew.

The sun was like a word written between the sea and the sky, a word that was swallowed up by the sea before any man had time to read it.

To-night the swinging stars shall plumb The silence of the sky.

The hoarse church-bells of London ring; The hoarser horns of London croak; The poor brown lives of London cling About the poor brown streets like smoke; The deep air stands above my roof Like water, to the floating stars. My friend and I - we sit aloof - We sit and smile, and bind our scars.

I want to introduce you to Jay, a 'bus-conductor and an idealist. She is not the heroine, but the most constantly apparent woman in this book. I cannot introduce you to a heroine because I have never met one.

It is a place of fine weather, and this is a book of fine weather, a book written in Spring. I will not remember the winter and the rain. It was the Spring that brought Sarah Brown to Mitten Island, and the Spring that first showed her magic. It was the Spring that awoke her on her first morning in the House of Living Alone.

To-day she had watched magic dancing in a mackintosh, and she was at a loss.

My soundless feet shall fly among the runners Through the red thunders of a Zeppelin raid, My still voice cheer the Anti-Aircraft gunners, The fires shall glare - but I shall cast no shade.

This is not a real book. It does not deal with real people, nor should it be read by real people. But there are in the world so many real books already written for the benefit of real people, and there are still so many to be written, that I cannot believe that a little alien book such as this, written for the magically-inclined minority, can be considered a trespasser.

Call no man a foe, but never love a stranger.

Call no man foe, but never love a stranger.

Family jokes, though rightly cursed by strangers, are the bond that keeps most families alive.

There are some people who can never see a little cloud of fantasy float across the horizon of their dreams without building a heavy castle in the air upon it, and bringing it to earth.

Family jokes, through rightly cursed by strangers, are the bond that keeps most families alive.