Quotes from Patrick Hamilton

She rebuked herself for this thought. /she was, she saw, always having thoughts for which she rebuked herself. It then flashed across her mind that the thoughts for which she rebuked herself selfom turned out to be other than shrewd and fruitful thoughts nand she rebuked herself for this as well.

Her thoughts, however, resembled those of a fish – something seen floating in a tank, brooding, self-absorbed, frigid, moving solemnly forward to its object or veering slowly sideways without fully conscious motivation. She had been born, apparently, without any natural predilection towards thought or action, and the circumstances of her early life had seemed to render both unnecessary.

There was not even any hope for Miss Roach that Mr. Thwaites would ever die.

The feeling of the morning after the night before is not a sensation endured by the dissolute only: every morning, for every human being, is in some sort a morning after the night before...

It was not for the piano-tuner to know that in this still, grey, winter-gripped dining-room, this apparent mortuary of desire and passion (in which the lift rumbled and knives and forks scraped upon plates), waves were flowing forward and backward, and through and through, of hellish revulsion and unquenchable hatred!

The madness of Christmas is not to be resisted by any human means. It either stealthily creeps or crudely batters its way into every fastness or fortress of prudence all over the land.

Ella glanced at him reproachfully, and explained herself. 'Talking to those Prostitutes,' said Ella. . . . Her violent stress upon the first syllable of this word implied a differentiation between a large class of almost venial Titutes, and another branch of the same class, designated as Pros, and beyond the pale.

If he was in the mood to admire someone, why had he not gone to someone genuinely pretty and attractive? She knew she was plain all right: she knew it with such depth and frankness that she could positively find it in her heart to despise his taste! And if she despised his taste, she must despise the whole situation of which she formed a part. He had set in motion a degrading event.