Quotes from Dodie Smith

And at last father flung the rug off as if it were hampering him and strode over to the table saying, 'cocoa, cocoa!'-- it might have been the most magnificent drink in the world; which, personally, I think it is.

There used to be two of us always on the look-out for life, talking to Miss Blossom at night, wondering, hoping; two Bronte-Jane Austen girls, poor but spirited, two Girls of Godsend Castle.

Your pain and anger will pass, but the guilt would remain with you for always.

but it is always dreadful when the pictures in front of one's eyes become meaningless and the real word is there instead and seems meaningless, too.

At least we're companions in misfortune

it seemed an awful waste that we weren't in love with each other.

You lose yourself in something beyond yourself and it's a lovely rest.

Am I really admitting that my sister is determined to marry a man she has only seen once and doesn't much like the look of? It is half real and half pretense - and I have an idea that it is a game most girls play when they meet an eligible young men. They just...wonder.

She will want things to stay just as they are. She will never have the fun of hoping something wonderful and exiting may be just around the corner.

Mr. Dearly wasn't exactly handsome but he had the kind of face you don't get tired of.

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

My God - it's a green child! said the American. What is this place - the House of Usher?

I couldn't make it out - why you ever let me, I mean. I understand now. Things like that happen when you're in love with the wrong person. Worse things. Things you never forgive yourself for.

I wasn't merely remembering, it seemed to be trapped inside my eyelids.

he talked quite naturally while we ate — about the difficulty of finding words to describe the luminous mist, and why one has the desire to describe beauty. Perhaps it's an attempt to possess it, I said. Or be possessed by it; perhaps that's the same thing, really. I suppose it's the complete identification with beauty one's seeking. The mist grew brighter and brighter.

Never have I felt so separate from her. 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.

But the happiness you hoped to win for me will never be mine.

Things you let yourself imagine happening, never do happen.

How can a young man like to wear a beard?

So much of me longs to run after him and cry, 'Yes, yes, yes!' A few hours ago, when I wrote I could never mean anything to him, such a chance would have seemed heaven on earth. And surely I could give him - a sort of contentment? That isn't enough to give. Not for the giver.

Simon: You always were wise beyond your years. Cassandra: No I wasn't. I used to be consciously naive.

Did you think of anything when Miss Marcy said Scoatney Hall was being re-opened? I thought of the beginning of Pride and Prejudice – where Mrs. Bennet says 'Netherfield Park is let a last.' And then Mr. Bennet goes over to call on the rich new owner.

She is a famous artists' model who claims to have been christened Topaz - even if this is true there is no law to make a woman stick to a name like that.

God - it's merely shorthand for where we come from, where we're going and what it's all about