Quotes from Rumer Godden

To step into the house was to step into stillness, into warmth even when it was damp and unlit; but after a moment a coldness crept about your shins.

My nation, as all nations, is becoming a land without peace, without thought, without mind, Madam Abbess. We are suffocating our spirits in commercial and material things. This is not envy, said Mr. Konishi earnestly. I am a rich man, with much business, so I have succeeded in all these things, but I know that they are empty.

Our whole Christian life is a dying to selfishness – wasn't it Monsignor Knox who said the cross was "I" crossed out?

You don't give up writing until writing gives you up. –

pointing to Father

A wise person would have known this, but sometimes it is better to feel a prickle than to be wise.

There is an Indian proverb that says that everyone is a house with four rooms, a physical, a mental, an emtional, and a spiritual . Most of us tend to live in one room most of the time but unless we go into every room every day, even if only to keep it aired, we are not a complete person.

It is an anxious, sometimes a dangerous thing to be a doll. Dolls cannot choose; they can only be chosen; they cannot 'do'; they can only be done by.

When you learn to read you will be born again...and you will never be quite so alone again.

I loved Mr. Darcy far more than any of my own husbands.

A garden isn't meant to be useful. It's for joy. Rumer Godden found in Power of Simple Living by Ellyn Sanna

One of the good things about a Catholic church is that it isn't respectable," she had told Richard. "You can find anyone in it, from duchesses to whores, from tramps to kings.

I have never understood why "hard work" is supposed to be pitiable. True, some work is soul destroying when it is done against the grain, but when it is part of "making" how can you grudge it? You get tired, of course, but the struggle, the challenge, the feeling of being extended as you never thought you could be is fulfilling and deeply, deeply satisfying.

He had always disliked what he could easily have; he had a passion for the untouched.

On and off, all that hot French August, we made ourselves ill from eating the greengages. Joss and I felt guilty; we were still at the age when we thought being greedy was a childish fault and this gave our guilt a tinge of hopelessness because, up to then, we had believed that as we grew older our faults would disappear, and none of them did.

When one came to know them it was surprising how childish grown people could be.

Every piece of writing... starts from what I call a grit... a sight or sound, a sentence or a happening that does not pass away... but quite inexplicably lodges in the mind.

You have to be very strong to live close to God or a mountain, or you'll turn a little mad.

I like the way everything is clear and concise, you'll always be forgiven but you must know the rules

Not what thou art, nor what thou hast been, beholdeth God with His merciful eyes, but what thou wouldst be.

I know now it is children who accept life; grown people cover it up and pretend it is different with drinks.

When I was a child I remember days that stretched into infinity with the certainty of other infinite days; certain, unhurried and brimmingly full.

Is it easier to be than to do?

Sometimes,' she said, remembering that morning, 'I write poems that are taller than I am