Quotes from Enid Bagnold

One's palate is reborn every morning!

Before you fall asleep everyday, say something positive to yourself.

There may be wonder in money, but, dear God, there is money in wonder.

In marriage there are no manners to keep up, and beneath the wildest accusations no real criticism. Each is familiar with that ancient child in the other who may erupt again. We are not ridiculous to ourselves. We are ageless. That is the luxury of the wedding ring.

If a dog doesn't put you first where are you both? In what relation? A dog needs God. It lives by your glances, your wishes. It even shares your humor. This happens about the fifth year. If it doesn't happen you are only keeping an animal.

The pleasure of one's effect on other people still exists in age - what's called making a hit. But the hit is much rarer and made of different stuff.

When a man goes through six years training to be a doctor he will never be the same. He knows too much.

If a dog doesn't put you first where are you both? In what relation? A dog needs God. It lives by your glances, your wishes. It even shares your humor. This happens about the fifth year. If it doesn't happen you are only keeping an animal.

In marriage there are no manners to keep up, and beneath the wildest accusations no real criticism. Each is familiar with that ancient child in the other who may erupt again.... We are not ridiculous to ourselves. We are ageless. That is the luxury of the wedding ring.

As for death one gets used to it, even if it's only other people's death you get used to.

Judges don't age. Time decorates them.

Sex -- the great inequality, the great miscalculator, the great Irritator.

The pleasure of one's effect on other people still exists in age -- what's called making a hit. But the hit is much rarer and made of different stuff.

The theatre is a gross art, built in sweeps and over-emphasis. Compromise is its second name.

I don't like people," said Velvet. "... I only like horses.

Who wants to become a writer? And why? ... It's the streaming reason for living. To note, to pin down, to build up, to create, to be astonished at nothing, to cherish the oddities, to let nothing go down the drain, to make something, to make a great flower of life, even if it's a cactus.

If I had my life over again[, ] I'd have thought more about words. And thought about them earlier.

It was March. The days of March creeping gustily on like something that man couldn't hinder and God wouldn't hurry.

The children seemed to cast their Precursors like shadows about the house, sometimes tangibly, in the sound of a voice, sometimes by suggestion, because it was striking the hour for their return from a walk, sometimes mysteriously, because inside the shell of their mother's head the children were painted like angels on the roof of a chapel.

She'd ride like a piece of lightning. No more weight'n a piece of lightning.

I have said before that the long corridor is wonderful. In the winter afternoons and evenings, when the mist rolled up and down over the tiles like the smoke in a tunnel, when one walked almost in darkness and peered into the then forbidden wards, when dwarfs coming from the G block grew larger and larger until the A block turned them into beings of one's own size, the corridor always made a special impression on me.

In a strange way', she thought, 'these absences suit my nature though not my heart. I love him, I miss him, but I have time to put on my humanity again.

And now, finished with that puzzling mixture of insane intimacy and isolation which is notoriety, Velvet was able to get on quietly to her next adventures.

Suddenly, as they walked with their buckets, it was not the child in each face that she sought, but the Wonder that had raised itself on to its two feet, that had learnt to walk, to run, that had spoken, that had got in touch with life under her hand.