Quotes from Dodie Smith

That evening of the row was our lowest depths; miserable people cannot afford to dislike each other. Cruel blows of fate call for extreme kindness in the family circle.

Before their marriages, Mr Dearly and Pongo had lived in a bachelor flat, where they were looked after by Mr Dearly's old nurse, Nanny Butler. Mrs Dearly and Missis had also lived in a bachelor flat (there are no such things as spinster flats)

My whole heart was so full of Simon that even my pity for Stephen wasn't quite real - it was only something I felt I ought to feel , more from my head than my heart . And I knew I ought to pity him all the more because I could pity him so little

Is it awful to join in this planning? Is it trying to sell one's sister? But surely Rose can manage to fall in love with them — I mean, with whichever one will fall in love with her. I hope it will be Neil, because I really do think Simon is a little frightening — only it is Neil who thinks England is a joke.

You can't cry on Heloïse; she thumps her tail sympathetically, but looks embarrassed and moves away.

There are some people who always find beauty makes them feel sadder, which is a very mysterious thing.

I had to do most of my writing in bed at night, which stopped me from encouraging Rose to talk much — not that she had shown signs of wanting to, having taken to going for long walks by herself. This desire for solitude often overcomes her at house-cleaning times.

I have noticed that when things happen in one's imaginings, they never happen in one's life, so I am curbing myself.

I soon realised I was making a fool of myself...things like that happen when you are in love with the wrong person. Worse things. things you never forgive yourself for... ...I'll blame myself for as long as I live. It's you I love and always will.

red marble drawing-room, where an

When I read a book, I put in all the imagination I can, so that it is almost like writing the book as well as reading it – or rather, it is like living it. It makes reading so much more exciting, but I don't suppose many people try to do it.

Well, once you stop believing in an old gentleman with a beard . . .It's only the word God, you know — it makes such a conventional noise." "It's merely shorthand for where we come from, where we're going, and what it's all about." "And do religious people find out what it's all about? Do they really get the answer to the riddle?" "They get just a whiff of an answer sometimes.

I thought what a good man he is, yet never annoyingly holy. And it struck me for the first time that if such a clever, highly educated man can believe in religion, it is almost impudent of an ignorant person like me to feel bored and superior about it.

And I regret to say that there were moments when my deep and loving pity for her merged into a desire to kick her fairly hard. For she is a girl who cannot walk her troubles off, or work them off; she is a girl to sit around and glare.

Ab has just walked in, mewing- it must be tea-time; that cat has a clock in his stomach.

Mrs. Fox-Cotton said that was no book for little girls, I told him. It's no book for little vicars, he said, chuckling.

Oh, mother, make the right thing happen for Rose!"—and I had a vision of poor mother scurrying from Heaven to do the best she could. The way one's mind can dash about just while one opens a window!

And I have found that sitting in a place where you have never sat before can be inspiring - I wrote my very best poem while sitting on the hen-house.

Like many other much-loved humans, they believed that they owned their dogs, instead of realizing that their dogs owned them.

The family - that dear octopus from whose tentacles we never quite escape, nor, in our inmost hearts, ever quite wish to