Quotes from Gerald Durrell

Secondo me, bisogna trovargli un nuovo istitutore», disse Larry. «Ti allontani da casa cinque minuti, e quando torni, lo trovi che sta sbudellando Moby Dick nel portico.»

Il suo nome non mi interessa», replicai seccato. «Per il momento è nella mia macchina, profumata come una sgualdrina parigina reduce da una sagra del formaggio, e quanto prima me ne libero tanto meglio sarà per me.» Jean si rizzò e mi guardò fisso in viso. «Una sgualdrina? Lei la chiama una sgualdrina? Esmeralda, come tutti sanno, è vergine.»

It's strange,' she said, 'very strange. I have a theory, you know, that some beautiful things fall in love with themselves, as Narcissus did. When they do that, they need no help in order to live; they become so absorbed in their own beauty that they live for that alone, feeding on themselves, as it were. Thus, the more beautiful they become, the stronger they become; they live in a circle.

Tea would arrive, the cakes squatting on cushions of cream, toast in a melting shawl of butter, cups agleam and a faint wisp of steam rising from the teapot spout." ? Gerald Durrell, My Family and Other Animals

choir of cicadas whose song made the air tremble.

where the streets were two-donkeys narrow and the air always redolent of freshly baked bread, fruit, sunshine and drains in equal quantities

There is a pleasure sure In being mad, which none but madmen know. DRYDEN, The Spanish Friar, II, i The Migration July had been blown out like a candle by a biting wind that ushered in a leaden August sky.

It is a melancholy of mine own, compounded of many simples, extracted from many objects, and indeed the sundry contemplation of my travels, which, by often rumination, wraps me in a most humorous sadness. – SHAKESPEARE, As You Like It

He was wearing a blue cotton shirt that was bleached and faded to the colour of a forget-me-not dried by the sun, and old grey flannel trousers.

Ci ritrovammo tutti a bordo per un consiglio di guerra. La mia proposta di sopravvivere un altro paio di giorni nutrendoci di patelle fu immediatamente bocciata.

The trouble with you hunting blokes is lack of imagination,' said Larry critically. 'I supply magnificent ideas – all you have to do is to try them out. But no, you condemn them out of hand.

My place is in the realm of ideas – the brainwork, as it were. I put my brain at your disposal for the formation of schemes and stratagems, and then you, the muscular ones, carry them out.

Dierdre was one of a pair of enormous common toads that I had found, tamed with comparative ease, and established in the tiny walled garden below the veranda. Here they lived a blameless life among the geraniums and tangerine trees, venturing up onto the veranda when the lights were lit to take their share of the insect life.

I must say that I was very glad when Juanita got better, not only because I did not want to lose her, but also because it is very exhausting to sleep with a playful peccary in your bed.

I don't want him drooling all over the place like a sex-starved spaniel.

Aspirin is so good for roses. Drachma pieces for the chrysanthemums, aspirin for roses, brandy for sweet peas, and a squeeze of lemon-juice for the fleshy flowers, like begonias.

As a statement calculated to quell alarm it left a lot to be desired.

What a wine … like the blood of a dragon and as smooth as a fish … What a wine! When I came back the air was full of sleep, so here I am.

ink-black shadows

On hearing that Theodore was a doctor, the priest, out of the kindness of his heart, described in graphic detail the innumerable symptoms of his several diseases (which God had seen fit to inflict him with)

The magnolia tree loomed vast over the house, its branches full of white blooms, like a hundred miniature reflections of the moon, and their thick, sweet scent hung over the veranda languorously, the scent that was an enchantment luring you out into the mysterious, moonlit countryside.

grapes still sun-warmed

yellow as a primrose, some great fat white doves

These summer storms would be hatched in a nest of cumulus clouds in the Albanian mountains and ferried rapidly across to Corfu by a warm, scouring wind