Quotes from Stella Gibbons

Some people believe that an attractive woman cannot stop men falling in love with her; but she can. If she really, in her deepest heart, does not want it, neither will they.

She is a character in a novel who reads the other characters as characters and rewrites them as people.

It was the loveliest hour of the English year: seven o'clock on Midsummer Night.

Her voice had a breathless, broken quality that suggested the fluty sexless timbre of a choir-boy's notes (only choir-boys are seldom sexless, as many a harassed vicaress knows to her cost).

It is rather frightening to be able to write so revoltingly, yet so successfully. All these letters are works of art, except, perhaps, the last. They are positively oily.

But Julia thought it would be a much better idea if they went to see Mr Dan Langham in 'On Your Toes!' at the New Hippodrome, so they went there instead and had a nice time instead of a nasty one.

I found, after spending ten years as a journalist, learning to say exactly what I meant in short sentences, that I must learn, if I was to achieve literature and favourable reviews, to write as though I were not quite sure about what I meant but was jolly well going to say something all the same in sentences as long as possible.

I did all that with my little hatchet.

Her blank eyes burrowed through the fetid air between herself and her visitor. They were without content; hollow pools of meaninglessness. They were not eyes, but voids sunk between two jutting pent-houses of bone and two bloodless hummocks of cheek. They suspended two raw rods of grief before their own immobility, like frozen fountains in a bright wintry air; and on these rods the fluttering rags of a futile grief were hung.

So that was it. Aunt Ada Doom was mad. You would expect, by all the laws of probability, to find a mad grandmother at Cold Comfort Farm, and for once the laws of probability had not done you down and a mad grandmother there was.

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." ? Stella Gibbons, Cold Comfort Farm

He came over to her with the lounging grace of a panther, and leaned against the mantelpiece.

Where are you flying off to?' inquired Viola, rather sulkily; few sights are more annoying when we feel lazy than that of somebody bounding upstairs.

All the same, I don't mean nothin' you wouldn't like yer mas to know about, see? That's straight, that is. It's Art, and that makes all the difference. *When it ain't Art it's dirt, but if it's Art it's all right, see?*

Marie Laurencin.

I am quite sure I shall find it very amusing and not at all too much for me.

They were what the Americans, bless them! call dumb.

Flora was pleasantly surprised to hear this, and for a second wondered if the women novelists had been misinformed about confinements? But no: she recollected that they usually left themselves a loophole by occasionally creating a primitive woman, a creature who was as close to the earth as a bloomy greengage and rather like one to look at and talk to, and this greengage creature never had any bother with her confinements, but just took them in her stride, as it were.

She detested rows and scenes, but enjoyed quietly pitting her cool will against opposition. It amused her; and when she was defeated, she withdrew in good order and lost interest in the campaign. She had little or no sporting spirit. Bloody battles to the death bored her, nor did she like other people to win.

I saw something nasty in the woodshed.' Flora

How can you eat that sawdust, Father?' she inquired, beginning on eggs and bacon and speaking cheerfully because it was a fine morning and only ten minutes past nine; and somehow, at the beginning of every new day, there was always a chance that this one might be different from all the rest. Something might happen; and then everything would be jollier all round.

Twice, in half an hour, Hetty had held up Miss Barlow's plans, and prevented her from moving as quickly as possible on to the next pleasure. Miss Barlow liked her life to be a steady movement towards pleasure. While she was having one, she was thinking about the next and what she should wear while she had that.

Claud twisted the television dial and amused himself by studying Flora's fair, pensive face. Her eyes were lowered and her mouth compressed over the serious business of arranging Elfine's future. He fancied she was tracing a pattern with the tip of her shoe. She could not look at him, because public telephones were not fitted with television dials. 'Oh, yes, we certainly don't

To tidy up takes time, and she wants all her time for wolfing books...