Christie Williams Quotes

Men—’ said Miss Williams, and stopped. As a rich property owner says ‘Bolsheviks’—as an earnest Communist says ‘Capitalists!’—as a good housewife says ‘Blackbeetles’—so did Miss Williams say ‘Men!

If you allow people to make more withdrawls than deposits in your life, you will be out of balance & in the negative! Know when to close the account.

...my father had been born from the minds of writers. I believed the Great Creator had flown these writers on the backs of thunderbirds to the moon and told them to write me a father. Writers like Mary Shelley, who wrote my father to have a gothic understanding of the tenderness of all monsters. It was Agatha Christie who created the mystery within my father and Edgar Allan Poe who gave darkness to him in ways that lifted him to the flight of the raven. William Shakespeare wrote my father a Romeo heart at the same time Susan Fenimore Cooper composed him to have sympathy toward nature and a longing for paradise to be regained. Emily Dickinson shared her poet self so my father would know the most sacred text of mankind is in the way we do and do not rhyme, leaving John Steinbeck to gift my father a compass in his mind so he would always appreciate he was east of Eden and a little south of heaven. Not to be left out, Sophia Alice Callahan made sure there was a part of my father that would always remain a child of the forest, while Louisa May Alcott penned the loyalty and hope within his soul. It was Theodore Dreiser who was left the task of writing my father the destiny of being an American tragedy only after Shirley Jackson prepared my father for the horrors of that very thing.

And because he hadn't considered attaching blame, because he lived outside of the jurisdiction of all judgement and thought everyone was always doing their best, Ganga put a hand on Christy's shoulder and squeezed.

Ladies and Gentlemen! Silence please!" Every one was startled. They looked round-at each other, at the walls. Who was speaking? The Voice went on- a high clear voice. You are charged with the following indictments: Edward George Armstrong, that you did upon the 14th day of March, 1925, cause the death of Louisa Mary Clees. Emily Caroline Brent, that upon the 5th November, 1931, you were responsible for the death of Beatrice Taylor. William Henry Blore, that you brought about the death of James Stephen Landor on October 10th, 1928. Vera Elizabeth Claythorne, that on the 11th day of August, 1935, you killed Cyril Ogilvie Hamilton. Philip Lombard, that upon a date in February, 1932, you were guilty of the death of twenty-one men, members of an East African tribe. John Gordon Macarthur, that on the 4th of January, 1917, you deliberately sent your wife's lover, Arthur Richmond, to his death. Anthony James Marston, that upon the 14th day of November last, you were guilty of murder of John and Lucy Combes. Thomas Rogers and Ethel Rogers, that on the 6th of May, 1929, you brought about the death of Jennifer Brady. Lawrence John Wargrave, that upon the 10th day of June, 1930, you were guilty of the murder of Edward Seton. Prisoners at the bar, have you anything to say in your defense?

There is no greater mistake in life than seeing things or hearing them at the wrong time. Shakespeare is ruined for most people by having been made to learn it at school; you should see Shakespeare as it was written to be seen, played on the stage. There you can appreciate it quite young, long before you take in the beauty of the words and of the poetry.

I wanted to putt my hand on this hand and hold it still under mine, made still by his made still. Oh he was bright and I was dark and I gave him all my darkness on that ship; but we joined, for all good things in the world, and to find somethin together; and loved, I never knew I could do it and was afraid; and on the bow of the ship that night that he said, "What have we done Christy?" I said, wonderin too, "But somethin good will come of this, I know somethin good will come of this..." Only sorrow came.

Miss Williams said: “I see now why you said that it might be better if she had never known. All the same, I

We gather information by many means, but a single spy in the right place and at the right moment may change the course of history.

the tenets of socialism: Own nothing individually. And then no one can take anything away from you.

He loved the way libraries smelled.

As a rich property owner says ‘Bolsheviks’ - as an earnest Communist says ‘Capitalists! ’ - as a good housewife says ‘Blackbeetles’ - so did Miss Williams say ‘Men!’ From her spinster’s, governess’s life, there rose up a blast of fierce feminism. Nobody hearing her speak could doubt that to Miss Williams Men were the Enemy!

Pieces of story she would discover intact in her. She would draw them into the air with a single phrase and be elsewhere for a moment, eyes distant and eyelashes winging as an image fleeted past. Christy would gently try and bring forth more, but like a fallen chandelier inside her the whole was shattered and beyond repair and there were only exquisite shards.

Suffice it to say I was compelled to create this group in order to find everyone who is, let's say, borrowing liberally from my INESTIMABLE FOLIO OF CANONICAL MASTERPIECES (sorry, I just do that sometimes), and get you all together. It's the least I could do. I mean, seriously. Those soliloquies in Moby-Dick? Sooo Hamlet and/or Othello, with maybe a little Shylock thrown in. Everyone from Pip in Great Expectations to freakin' Mr. Rochester in Jane Eyre mentions my plays, sometimes completely mangling my words in nineteenth-century middle-American dialect for humorous effect (thank you, Sir Clemens). Many people (cough Virginia Woolf cough) just quote me over and over again without attribution. I hear James Joyce even devoted a chapter of his giant novel to something called the "Hamlet theory," though do you have some sort of newfangled English? It looks like gobbledygook to me. The only people who don't seek me out are like Chaucer and Dante and those ancient Greeks. For whatever reason. And then there are the titles. The Sound and the Fury? Mine. Infinite Jest? Mine. Proust, Nabokov, Steinbeck, and Agatha Christie all have titles that are me-inspired. Brave New World? Not just the title, but half the plot has to do with my work. Even Edgar Allan Poe named a character after my Tempest's Prospero (though, not surprisingly, things didn't turn out well for him!). I'm like the star to every wandering bark, the arrow of every compass, the buzzard to every hawk and gillyflower ... oh, I don't even know what I'm talking about half the time. I just run with it, creating some of the SEMINAL TOURS DE FORCE OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. You're welcome.

Albert Einstein, considered the most influential person of the 20th century, was four years old before he could speak and seven before he could read. His parents thought he was retarded. He spoke haltingly until age nine. He was advised by a teacher to drop out of grade school: “You’ll never amount to anything, Einstein.” Isaac Newton, the scientist who invented modern-day physics, did poorly in math. Patricia Polacco, a prolific children’s author and illustrator, didn’t learn to read until she was 14. Henry Ford, who developed the famous Model-T car and started Ford Motor Company, barely made it through high school. Lucille Ball, famous comedian and star of I Love Lucy, was once dismissed from drama school for being too quiet and shy. Pablo Picasso, one of the great artists of all time, was pulled out of school at age 10 because he was doing so poorly. A tutor hired by Pablo’s father gave up on Pablo. Ludwig van Beethoven was one of the world’s great composers. His music teacher once said of him, “As a composer, he is hopeless.” Wernher von Braun, the world-renowned mathematician, flunked ninth-grade algebra. Agatha Christie, the world’s best-known mystery writer and all-time bestselling author other than William Shakespeare of any genre, struggled to learn to read because of dyslexia. Winston Churchill, famous English prime minister, failed the sixth grade.

Reader, pick any Brontë. Any one, doesn’t matter. What do you see? You see intelligence, you see an observer, you see distance, you don’t see beauty. Look at Maria Edgeworth, Mrs Gaskell. Look at Edith Wharton, she’s Henry James in a dress. Henry called Edith the Angel of Devastation, which is not exactly Top Score in the Feminine Charms department. Agatha Christie is a perfect match for Alastair Sim when he was playing Miss Fritton in the Tesco box-set of the old St Trinian’s. You can’t be beautiful and a writer, because to be a writer you have to be the one doing the looking; if

Men—” said Miss Williams, and stopped. As a rich property owner says “Bolsheviks”—as an earnest Communist says “Capitalists!”—as a good housewife says “Blackbeetles”—so did Miss Williams say “Men!

Men—’ said Miss Williams, and stopped. As a rich property owner says ‘Bolsheviks’—as an earnest Communist says ‘Capitalists!’—as a good housewife says ‘Blackbeetles’—so did Miss Williams say ‘Men!

With a raspy growl climbing up her throat, she bent and made a flawless, rounded snowball then sent it sailing into the tree trunk. It collided with a loud, invigorating splat. Taken aback, Cara’s mouth fell open and she looked from the powdered residue left as proof of her victory and then to Will. He stood at her side, a gentle, encouraging smile on his lips. “I-I did it.” “Of course you did,” he said and stooped forward. He constructed another missile and held it out. She claimed it without hesitation. “This is for forgetting me,” she called at her inanimate object. She tossed another ball and it found its mark. William proffered another ball. “This is for not allowing me to paint.” She tossed another. Her chest heaved with the force of her exertion, but the winter air purified her lungs, spreading its cleansing, healing power through her once-cold being. He continued to supply perfectly molded snowballs. “And for binding me to a man just like you.” This time, Cara bent and assembled her own. “And I am nothing like you,” she shouted into the quiet. Only, as she threw, she no longer knew if the furious energy lending her strength came from the sad, sorry little girl she’d been, alone in a loveless world, or the bitter, angry, friendless woman she’d become.

And it did not matter that all of this would pass, that’s what occurred to me. It didn’t matter this time and place would be gone, that these feelings would go to the place of all feelings once pure and complete. It didn’t matter that Sophie and Charlie and Ronnie Troy would slip out of my life, and Christy and Annie Mooney, and then Ganga and Doady, that all of them would be gone but be like remembered music or the amassed richness of a lived life. Because at that moment I understood that this in miniature was the world, a connective of human feeling, for the most part by far pulsing with the dream of the betterment of the other, and in this was an invisible current that, despite faults and breakdowns, was all the time being restored and switched back on and was running not because of past or future times but because, all times since beginning and to the end, the signal was still on, still pulsing, and still trying to love.

If you allow people to make more withdrawals than deposits in your life, you will be out of balance and in the negative. Know when to close the account.

I did J.E.S.T. here when I was with the First

Christie: “Even if he is – aren’t you the one who’s always saying we shouldn’t trust the wealthy, that they became that way by walking on the backs of the poor?

Hun skottet bort på Agatha Christie-boken igjen, tok den til seg og bladde litt i den. Alt var så enkelt, så oversiktlig. Et samfunn eller en familie blir rystet i grunnvollene av et mord. Miss Marple kommer inn i bildet, samler informasjon, analyserer situasjonen, avslører morderen, og harmonien blir gjenopprettet. Et nøye regissert univers, stringent og gjennomsiktig. Og enkelt å navigere i. Hun skulle ønske at noen kunne ta regien på hennes liv på samme måte og ordne det slik at alt fikk en enkel, logisk og lykkelig løsning.

Zoals een rijke grondbezitter zegt: 'Bolsjewieken', zoals een overtuigd communist zegt: 'kapitalisten' - zoals een goede huisvroyw zegt: 'kakkerlakken' - zo zei juffrouw Williams: 'Mannen!

I have always been a pupil of the great Bismarck, in that it is far better to try to anticipate and alter events rather than simply react to them.

she’d known a lifetime of night calls, slept the thin sleep of those familiar with the clockless continuum of human woe, the multi-volume encyclopaedia of illnesses, infections, fevers that attack the hearts of the aged, the ears of infants, and, in general, the abiding and mysterious tendency of all living things to sometimes become inflamed. She was not alarmed. She had the tranquillity of the experienced and she called out, ‘Coming,’ which was the first word Christy heard her say in five decades. And for a moment, I couldn’t get him to move. For a moment, by the magic of empathy and imagination, I am him, and I am the one come back and seeking forgiveness for a folly of youth, and the heartbreak is opened red and raw and forgiveness seems a thing too large for this life.

She existed, one might say, only in him and for him.” Miss Williams paused a minute and then said quietly: “That, I think, is the justification for what she eventually did.