Quotes from Christopher Fry

we have given you a world as contradictory as a female, as cabbalistic as a male, a conscienceless hermaphrodite who plays heaven off against hell, hell off against heaven, revolving in the ballroom of the skies glittering with conflict as diamonds: we have wasted paradox and mystery on you when all you ask us for is cause and effect! A copy of your birth-certificate was all you needed to make you at peace with Creation. How uneconomical the whole thing's been.

Madam, if I were Herod in the middle Of the massacre of the innocents, I'd pause Just to consider the confusion of your imagery.

MARGARET Have any of you Seen that poor child Alizon? I think she must be lost. NICHOLAS Who isn't? The best thing we can do is to make wherever we're lost in look as much like home as we can. Now don't be worried. She can't be more lost than she was with us.

Thomas, only another Fifty years or so and then I promise to let you go.

My dear Mother, I didn't knock myself down. Why Should I pick myself up?

I have come Here to have the protection of your laughter.

jennet. Are you doing this to save me? thomas. You natter my powers, My sweet; you're too much a woman. But if you wish You can go down to the dinner of damnation On my arm. jennet. I dine elsewhere.

JENNET What can you see Out there? THOMAS Out here? Out here is a sky so gentle Five stars are ventured on it. I can see The sky's pale belly glowing and growing big, Soon to deliver the moon. And I can see A glittering smear, the snail-trail of the sun Where it crawled with its golden shell into the hills. A darkening land sunken into prayer Lucidly in dewdrops of one syllable, Nunc dimittis. I see twilight, madam. JENNET But what can you hear? THOMAS The howl of human jackals-.

You have cut yourself a shape on the air, which may be My scar.

Do you want our spirits to hobble out of their graves Enduring twinges of hopeless human affection As long as death shall last? Still to suffer Pain in the amputated limb! To feel Passion in vacuo! That is the sort of thing That causes sun-spots, and the lord knows what Infirmities in the firmament.

I've only one small silver night to spend So show me no luxuries. It will be enough If you spare me a spider, and when it spins I'll see The six days of Creation in a web And a fly caught on the seventh. And if the dew Should rise in the web, I may well die a Christian.

A priest found an infant, about ten inches long, Crammed into the poor-box. The money had all Been taken. Nothing was there except myself, I was the baby, as it turned out. The priest, Thinking I might have eaten the money, held me Upside down and shook me, which encouraged me To live, I suppose, and I lived.

I have at least three virtues. How many have you got?

You have such little hands. I knew I should love you.

MARGARET Do I seem composed, sufficiently placid and unmotherly? ALIZON Altogether, except that your earring Trembles a little. MARGARET It's always our touches of vanity That manage to betray us.

He picked on his rags and his bones as love Picks upon hearts, he with an eye to profit And love with an eye to pain.

Looking down upon us maybe God laughs, but at the same time he cries too.

They say that I bring back the past; For instance, Helen comes, Brushing the maggots from her eyes, And, clearing her throat of several thousand years, She says 'I loved . . .'; but cannot any longer Remember names. Sad Helen. Or Alexander, wearing His imperial cobwebs and breastplate of shining worms Wakens and looks for his glasses, to find the empire Which he knows he put beside his bed.

You let the fairies fox you while the devil Does you.

Your life, sir, is propelled By a dream of the fear of having nightmares; your love Is the fear of your single self; your world's history The fear of a possible leap by a possible antagonist Out of a possible shadow, or a not-improbable Skeleton out of your dead-certain cupboard. But here am I, the true phenomenon Of acknowledged guilt, steaming with the block Of the pimp and the rag-and-bone man, Crime transparent. What the hell are we waiting for?

As it is, the town is hell's delight.

They say one thing and another thing and both at once;

For God's sake hang me, before I love that woman!

And I'm sure There was blood in the gutter from somebody's head Or else it was the sunset in a puddle,