Quotes from William March

Everybody must seem crazy if you see deep enough into their minds.

The living room had that depressing look of expensive bad taste.

What you say about me, you're really saying about yourself.

Is it that the eye finds what the mind is seeking?

Nurse Dennison's husband, conventionally true to the family tradition of nausea, burning throat, and convulsions, had passed on in the autumn of 1951, with, of course, the conventional policies on his life.

once believed I was a foundling with royal blood—Plantagenet, I think it was. I don't know how I managed to get on my parents' doorstep,

No." It was then Christine went back to her kitchen, to finish the luncheon dishes there; but her suspicions were now aroused, and she wondered why the child had asked her strange question, for she knew now, and had known for a long time, that Rhoda asked nothing idly, for the pleasure of hearing her own voice, as other children did.

She will destroy us all. I did not escape, either. She will destroy us all, in time.

The postman said there were two ways of meeting experience—you could expect pain or you could expect happiness. "Now, I'm going to look on the bright side until I know to the contrary," he said. "I'm going to look on the bright side, and keep saying everything's going to come out the way I want it to.

Leroy unscrewed the hose from its faucet and prepared to put it away in the basement, thinking: Nobody can put nothing over on Rhoda, I'll say that much for her. And nobody can put nothing over on me, neither. I guess Rhoda and me are just alike. But in this he was mistaken, as we shall see in time, for Rhoda was able to put into action the things that he could only turn over in his mind as fantasies.

Monica was the first woman in town to bob her hair," said Miss Burgess. "And she was the first woman, at least the first respectable one, to smoke in public." "When you see her," continued Miss Claudia, "tell her I think she stepped on my train because Colonel Glass had danced with me three times that evening, and hadn't danced with her once.

Mrs. Penmark said that she was, adding that the child, almost from babyhood, had been something of a riddle both to herself and her husband. It was a thing difficult to isolate, or identify, but there was a strangely mature quality in the child's character which they found disturbing.

Mrs. Breedlove looked about her, and then realizing for the first time the effect she'd created among her guests, she tossed her head and said in a surprised voice, "I don't see why the idea shocks you so. A thing so commonplace as that! Actually, homosexuality is triter than incest! Doctor Kettlebaum considered it was all a matter of personal preference.

Miss Burgess Fern came up, sat in the chair beside her sister, and, after listening a moment, said, "I think the secret of Rhoda's temperament is the simple fact that she doesn't need others, the way most of us do. She is such a self-sufficient little girl! Never in all my life have I seen anybody so completely all-of-one-piece!

Miss Octavia, from the depth of her experience with children, spoke gently. "You will not be able to change her. The child lives in her own particular world, and I'm sure it isn't anything at all like the world you and I live in.

She just went on eating her apple, shaking her head, and looking us over with that calculating, almost contemptuous, look she has at certain times." "Oh, I know! I know!" said Christine. "I've seen that look so many times!

It seemed to her suddenly that violence was an inescapable factor of the heart, perhaps the most important factor of all—an ineradicable thing that lay, like a bad seed, behind kindness, behind compassion, behind the embrace of love itself. Sometimes it lay deeply hidden, sometimes it lay close to the surface; but always it was there, ready to appear, under the right conditions, in all its irrational dreadfulness.

then, with no emotion in her voice, as though repeating a thing which did not really concern her, she said, "I don't see why Claude Daigle got the medal. It was mine. Everybody knew it was mine.

I was surprised that anyone can have a pistol here, if he wants it. In New York, having a pistol is one of the worst things you can possibly do." "You have to have a permit," said Emory. "That is, everybody but the crook that shoots you has to have one. Now, we're more civilized in this state; we believe in giving the victim a chance, too.

I don't believe environment had much to do with it. It must be something deeper than that. She sighed, raised her head, and looked at Mrs. Breedlove once more, thinking: It was something dark. Something dark and unexplainable.

Movie Adaptation of William March's THE BAD SEED 1956: Produced by Warner Bros. Directed by Mervyn LeRoy. Starring Nancy Kelly, Patty McCormack, and Eileen Heckart. Screenplay by John Lee Mahin. Academy Award nominee for Best Actress, Best Actress in a Supporting Role (both McCormack and Heckart were nominated), and Best Cinematography, Black-and-White.

Christine read the text slowly, shook her head, and thought: Is there nothing but violence everywhere? Is there no real peace anywhere in the world? She wondered if her daughter should be taught such things, but sighing in a gentle protest, feeling that others surely knew more about these matters of faith than she did, she asked her daughter the questions required.

That good-looking Mrs. Penmark, that dizzy blonde, didn't know what it was all about. She was too dumb, when you came right down to it, to understand his contempt for her. She was one of them soft, easily-taken-in ones that went around feeling sorry for people. She was one of the ones that was eat up with kindness

Later that day, when Rhoda returned from church, she had her prize tucked under her arm; it was a copy of Elsie Dinsmore, and, going at once to the park, she opened her book and began eagerly to read, as though she hoped to find there an understanding of those puzzling values she saw in others