Quotes from Nevil Shute

If Ronnie Clarke knew about Brenda and myself I had probably told him a bit more, but I didn't really care. He was a very old friend now, and there are some things that a friend ought to know.

It's ever so kind of you to take the trouble," she said. She turned to her father. "Dad, this gentleman's mended my iron, and it works beautifully." She used her normal language without thinking anything about it, but each Negro within hearing caught the word "gentleman" and stiffened for a moment in wonder. They certainly were in a foreign country, a long ways from home.

I stopped reading and stared round the room. There were the new curtains, the new shades on all the lamps, the deep new pile of the Indian carpet beneath my feet, the new loose cover of the chair that I was sitting in, the slightly different appearance of the wallpaper by the electric switch, the gleam of the new paint. I had not noticed any of them.

Okay,' said Jack phlegmatically. 'Be seeing you.' Friends and women, he knew, never really mixed.

They're terribly anxious to see him married, and they're always gossiping. And then Mrs. Plowden said, "He might do worse than look in his own kitchen, to my way of thinking." And Annie said, "Aye, that's a fact. It wouldn't be the first time that's happened, and it won't be the last.

Even into this quiet place the war had reached like the tentacle of an octopus and had touched this girl and brought about her death. Like some infernal monster, still venomous in death, a war can go on killing people for a long time after it's all over.

When a good man employs others he becomes a slave to the job, for the job is the guarantee for the security of many men.

Moira nodded. "If what they say is right, we're none of us going to have time to do all that we planned to do. But we can keep on doing it as long as we can.

I want to drink hard liquor, as you call it, before lunch. I've got a mouth like the bottom of the parrot's cage. You wouldn't want me to throw a screaming fit in front of all your officers.

Only by an act of treachery to those who believe in us can either of us escape.

This is the way the world ends. Not with a bang but a whimper.

She said, "Aye, they're getting for him everything the heart of man could desire, saving the one thing." I asked, "What's that?" She said, "A wife." She's very shrewd.

You know, you're a very lucky man." "Why do you say that?" "You've got a full-time job to do.

Before she had been a year at Ford Janet came to look forward to her next pass with something close to apprehension; it was pitiful to see her mother ageing and be unable to help her, to see her father turning into just another poor old man.

He said, The spring was good enough for their mothers and their grandmothers before them. They will get ideas above their station in life if they have a well. She

You do not understand. Over there, they want to help us. If they make a home for children, refugees from Europe, they feel that they are doing something worth while. And they are.

This may have been what John and I were brought together for,' she said. 'In thirty years the world may need one of these little ones.' She paused. 'It may be Ronnie or it may be Willem, or it may be little Pierre who does great things for the world,' she said. 'But when that happens, monsieur, it will be because I met your son to show him Paris, and we fell in love.

I mean, why waste time in sleeping?" She laughed, a little shrilly. "Just doesn't make sense.

Most jobs are interesting when you are learning them,' I said.

Like some infernal monster, still venomous in death, a war can go on killing people for a long time after it's all over.

I pointed out to her what sort of life she would be able to lead upon nine hundred a year. As an instance, I told her that she could have a country cottage in Devonshire and a little car, and a daily maid, and still have money to spare for a moderate amount of foreign travel.

It was her dog getting killed that put the lid on it," said Viola, seven years later. "Funny, that, wasn't it? She stood up quite well when your brother got killed and when her father got killed, but when the dog got killed it finished her. I suppose she felt responsible or something." "I suppose she did," I said. "What happened after

Life gets tedious," she quoted. "Not sometimes. All the time.

The happily married man with a large family is the test pilot for me.