Quotes from Dodie Smith

it is a great, old-fashioned brick one which helps to keep the kitchen warm and gives us extra hot-water. With the copper lit as well as the range, the kitchen is much the warmest place in the house; that is why we sit in it so much. But even in summer we have our meals here, because the dining-room furniture was sold over a year ago.

Vicar: You ought to try [religion], one of these days, he said. I believe you'd like it. I said: but I have tried it, haven't I? I've been to church. It never seems to take.

I stood there ringing the bell and banging on the door, feeling I could make someone be there, knowing all the time that I couldn't.

Oh, I have just had an idea - after tea I shall attack myself with sandpaper.

The more I strive for them the more they utterly elude me

Porque una debe de hundirse en el abismo si quiere elevarse a las alturas.

How queer to think that the old lady in the black military cloak was the Miss Milly who went to the dancing class! It makes me wonder what I shall be like when I am old.

He can be so appreciative of all forms of art, but so matter-of-fact and unemotional about it.

I go backwards and forwards, recapturing the past, wondering about the future—and, most unreasonably, I find myself longing for the past more than for the future.

It can't be immoral to love anyone -- as long as one doesn't hurt anyone by it.

I heard Molly say, 'Our Mouse is a hundred miles away.' But I wasn't as far away as that; I was in a dimly lit street somewhere in Hampstead.

The table was a pool of candlelight -- so bright that the rest of the room seemed almost black, with the faces of the family portraits floating in the darkness.

I felt as I did once when Rose had very bad toothache - that it was callous of me to be so separate from the pain, that just being sorry for suffering people isn't enough.

Perhaps he found beauty saddening – I do myself sometimes. Once when I was quite little I asked father why this was and he explained that it was due to our knowledge of beauty's evanescence, which reminds us that we ourselves shall die.

The one Bach piece I learnt made me feel I was being repeatedly hit on the head with a teaspoon

Feeling like what, Cassandra Mortmain? Flat? Depressed? Empty? If so, why, pray? I thought if I made myself write I should find out what is wrong with me, but I haven't, so far. Unless — could I possibly be jealous of Rose? I will pause and search my innermost soul . . . I have searched it for a solid five minutes. And I swear I am not jealous of Rose; [..]

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.

I really am just as discontented, but I don't seem to notice it so much.

Any cat can make a house seem haunted.

It was wonderful, of course-- ham with mustard is a meal of glory.

rich old gentleman who lived at Scoatney Hall, five miles away, always sent us a ham at Christmas whether we paid the rent or not. He died last November and we have sadly missed the ham.

I could look at stationers' shops for ever and ever. Rose says they are the dullest shops in the world except, perhaps, butchers'. (I don't see how you can call butchers' shops dull; they are too full of horror.)

Perhaps the effect wears off in time, or perhaps you don't notice it if you are born with it, but it does seem to me that the climate of richness must always be a little dulling to the senses. Perhaps it takes the edge off joy as well as off sorrow.

How indescribable the scent of autumn flowers was– barely a scent at all, really; just a faint, strange smell, pleasant but sad. Could a smell be sad or was it just the association with the dying summer?