Quotes from Stella Gibbons

Nature is all very well in her place, but she must not be allowed to make things untidy.

He was, she reflected, almost rudely like a tortoise; and she was glad her friend kept none as pets or they might have suspected mockery.

Here was an occasion, she thought, for indulging in that deliberate rudeness which only persons with habitually good manners have the right to commit.

Happiness can never hope to command so much interest as distress.

The life of a journalist is poor, nasty, brutish, and short. So is his style

Flora sighed. It was curious that persons who lived what the novelists called a rich emotional life always seemed to be a bit slow on the uptake.

One of the disadvantages of almost universal education was the fact that all kinds of persons acquired a familiarity with one's favorite writers. It gave one a curious feeling; it was like seeing a drunken stranger wrapped in one's dressing gown.

Well, when I am fifty-three or so I would like to write a novel as good as Persuasion but with a modern setting, of course. For the next thirty years or so I shall be collecting material for it. If anyone asks me what I work at, I shall say, 'Collecting material'. No one can object to that.

I saw something nasty in the woodshed.

She liked Victorian novels. They were the only kind of novel you could read while eating an apple.

That would be delightful,' agreed Flora, thinking how nasty and boring it would be.

Surely she had endured enough for one evening without having to listen to intelligent conversation?

Like all really strong-minded women, on whom everybody flops, she adored being bossed about. It was so restful.

Mary, you know I hate parties. My idea of hell is a very large party in a cold room where everybody has to play hockey properly.

You have the most revolting Florence Nightingale complex,' said Mrs. Smiling. It is not that at all, and well you know it. On the whole, I dislike my fellow beings; I find them so difficult to understand. But I have a tidy mind and untidy lives irritate me. Also, they are uncivilized.

Flora sighed. It was curious that persons who lived what the novelists called a rich emotional life always seemed to be a bit slow on the uptake.

The education bestowed on Flora Poste by her parents had been expensive, athletic and prolonged; and when they died within a few weeks of one another during the annual epidemic of the influenza or Spanish Plague which occurred in her twentieth year, she was discovered to possess every art and grace save that of earning her own living.

Nature is all very well in her place, but she must not be allowed to make things untidy.

Here was an occasion, she thought, for indulging in that deliberate rudeness which only persons with habitually good manners have the right to commit...

Haven't you enough money?' For she knew that this is what is the matter with nearly everybody over twenty-five.

Happiness can never hope to command so much interest as distress.

Women are all alike-- aye fussin' over their fal-lals and bedazin' a man's eyes, when all they really want is man's blood and his heart out of his body and his soul and his pride....

Well,' said Mrs Smiling, 'it sounds an appalling place, but in a different way from all the others. I mean, it does sound interesting and appalling, while the others just sound appalling.

On the whole, Flora liked it better when they were silent, though it did rather give her the feeling that she was acting in one of the less cheerful German highbrow films.