Quotes from Barbara Comyns

It was Sunday morning, and old people passed me like sad grey waves on their way to church.

Now I lay down on this tree and felt a lonely sadness coming over me in waves. Slow tears ran from my eyes and trickled into my ears. I thought, 'I even cry in a humble, common way, with tears flowing into my ears.' But the humble, common tears had relieved me[...]

She cleared her throat once or twice, and said something about poor people should eat a lot of herrings, as they were most nutritious, also she had heard poor people eat heaps of sheeps' heads and she went on to ask if I ever cooked them. I said I would rather be dead than cook or eat a sheep's head; I'd seen them in butchers' shops with awful eyes and bits of wool sticking to their skulls. After that helpful hints for the poor were forgotten.

Her face worked in an odd way, like knitting coming undone.

I had a kind of idea if you controlled your mind and said, 'I won't have any babies' very hard, they most likely wouldn't come. I thought that was what was meant by birth-control, but by this time I knew that idea was quite wrong.

When I left the kitchen the whole family were all gazing upwards at the dancing flies.

Two people were swimming in the sea One was alive and the other dead. See.

She came to a little wrecked pleasure-steamer, which had become embedded in the mud several summers ago and which no one had bothered to remove. It had been a vulgar, tubby little boat when it used to steam through the water with its handful of holiday-makers, giving shrill whistles at every bend and causing a wash that disturbed the fishermen as they sat peacefully on the banks; but, now it lay sideways in the mud with its gaudy paint all bleached, it was almost beautiful.

I began to feel frightened and depressed, and thought, 'This is my punishment for being an adulteress.' Then I remembered I was even poorer before I was one, so perhaps it was a punishment for something I had forgotten.

Tenía la idea de que, si ejercías un control mental y te decías muy seria: «No tendré hijos», seguramente no vendrían.

I dreaded going to the farm, but when I arrived there, it was very much better than I expected. Things one dreads usually are: it's only the things we look forward to that go all wrong.

Afterwards they went down the garden together to pick peas for supper, and to dream their dreams in the summer dusk.

After a time Emma opened the picnic basket and they ate honey sandwiches with ants on them and drank the queer tea that always comes from a thermos.

I think I would rather hear roundabout music than any symphony concert. I know Beatrix would be disgusted to hear me say so, but its so gladsad somehow and makes me feel brave, late at night long after we were in bed we could hear the music floating over the river, and see the reflected moving lights on our walls, it was beautiful to lie in bed like that.

Everywhere in the house there were sad little reminders—a limp string shopping-bag hanging from the kitchen door; a fortune-telling book in the dresser-drawer; a fern in the dining-room window that had died from neglect since she had ceased to tend it; and one small black glove mixed up with the string she used to save—little things like that were everywhere.

Habría dado cualquier cosa por pasear por una de esas típicas calles londinenses, con casas de sucios ladrillos amarillos a los lados, altas casas pareadas con un tramo de escalones hasta la puerta y barandillas y verjas de hierro que parecen enjaular unos arbustos ralos y desgreñados, y, de vez en cuando, un gato dormido en un alféizar.

Escribía y era una intelectual de marca mayor, le interesaban mucho los derechos de la mujer pero le desagradaban los niños, los recién nacidos en particular, aunque puede que fuera porque ella no los había tenido ni podía tenerlos ya, puesto que Simeon, su marido, la había dejado.