Quotes from Dodie Smith

I don't want to miss anything.

I get the feeling I do on finishing a novel with a brick-wall happy ending - I mean the kind of ending when you never think any more about the characters.

A mist is rolling over the fields. Why is a summer mist romantic and autumn mist just sad?

I should rather like to tear these last pages out of the book. Shall I? No-a journal ought not to cheat.

I could marry the Devil himself if he had some money.

Oh, wise young judge.

He laughed a little, in an odd, nervous kind of way. Because if I don't get going soon, the whole impetus may die--and if that happens, well, I really shall consider a long, restful plunge into insanity. Sometimes the abyss yawns very attractively.

It isn't a bit of use my pretending I'm not crying, because I am... Pause to mop up. Better now. Perhaps it would really be rather dull to be married and settled for life. Liar! It would be heaven.

Walking down Belmotte was the oddest sensation-- every step took us deeper into the mist until at last it closed over our heads. It was like being drowned in the ghost of water.

It is odd how different a house feels when one is alone in it.

Prayer's a very tricky business.

Art could state very little - it's whole business is to evoke responses.

All I really want to write about is what happened just before he left. But if I let myself start with that I might forget some of the things which came first. And every word he said is of deepest value to me.

Everything in the least connected with him has value for me; if someone even mentions his name it is like a little present to me--and I long to mention it myself, I start subjects leading up to it, and then feel myself going red. I keep swearing to myself not to speak of him again- and then an opportunity occurs and I jump at it.

I was so happy that I wanted to be kind to everyone in the world.

People do look different with their eyes closed, their features seem so much more sculptured.

Topaz was wonderfully patient - but sometimes I wonder if it is not only patience, but also a faint resemblance to cows.

I am surprised to see how much I have written; with stories even a page can take me hours, but the truth seems to flow out as fast as I can get it down.

perhaps it is loving that counts, not the being loved in return- that perhaps true loving can never know anything but happiness.

When I read a book, I put in all the imagination I can, so that it is almost like writing a book as well as reading it - or rather, it is like living it.

As long as I live I shall remember that silent minute.

there is something revolting about the way girls' minds so often jump to marriage long before they jump to love. And most of those minds are shut to what marriage really means.

It is the still, yellow kind of afternoon when one is apt to get stuck in a dream if one sits very quiet

Father says hot water can be as stimulating as an alcoholic drink and though I never come by one...I can well believe it.