Dodie Quotes

There is only one page left to write on. I will fill it with words of only one syllable. I love. I have loved. I will love.

Noble deeds and hot baths are the best cures for depression.

How I wish I lived in a Jane Austen novel!

I shouldn't think even millionaires could eat anything nicer than new bread and real butter and honey for tea.

When I read a book, I put in all the imagination I can, so that it is almost like writing the book as well as reading it - or rather, it is like living it. It makes reading so much more exciting, but I don't suppose many people try to do it.

I only want to write. And there's no college for that except life.

Perhaps watching someone you love suffer can teach you even more than suffering yourself can.

Why is summer mist romantic and autumn mist just sad?

Even a broken heart doesn't warrant a waste of good paper.

I write this sitting in the kitchen sink.

Contemplation seems to be about the only luxury that costs nothing.

I like seeing people when they can't see me.

I am a restlessness inside a stillness inside a restlessness.

Perhaps if I make myself write I shall find out what is wrong with me.

...I have noticed that when things happen in one's imaginings, they never happen in one's life, so I am curbing myself.

Rose doesn’t like the flat country, but I always did – flat country seems to give the sky such a chance.

Only the margin left to write on now. I love you, I love you, I love you.

And no bathroom on earth will make up for marrying a bearded man you hate.

Oh, it is wonderful to wake up in the morning with things to look forward to!

I know all about the facts of life, and I don't think much of them.

It is rather exciting to write by moonlight.

I was wandering around as usual, in my unpleasantly populated sub-conscious...

I wonder if there isn't a catch about having plenty of money? Does it eventually take the pleasure out of things?

Ah, but you're the insidious type--Jane Eyre with of touch of Becky Sharp. A thoroughly dangerous girl.

He stood staring into the wood for a minute, then said: "What is it about the English countryside — why is the beauty so much more than visual? Why does it touch one so?" He sounded faintly sad. Perhaps he finds beauty saddening — I do myself sometimes. Once when I was quite little I asked father why this was and he explained that it was due to our knowledge of beauty's evanescence, which reminds us that we ourselves shall die. Then he said I was probably too young to understand him; but I understood perfectly.

Truthfulness so often goes with ruthlessness.

Just to be in love seemed the most blissful luxury I had ever known. The thought came to me that perhaps it is the loving that counts, not the being loved in return—that perhaps true loving can never know anything but happiness. For a moment I felt that I had discovered a great truth.

So many of the loveliest things in England are melancholy.

Only half a page left now. Shall I fill it with 'I love you, I love you'-- like father's page of cats on the mat? No. Even a broken heart doesn't warrant a waste of good paper.

I suppose the best kind of spring morning is the best weather God has to offer.

Was I the only woman in the world who, at my age - and after a lifetime of quite rampant independence - still did not quite feel grown up?

I have noticed that rooms which are extra clean feel extra cold

There is something revolting about the way girls' minds so often jump to marriage long before they jump to love.

It's odd how different a house feels when one is alone in it. It makes it easier to think rather private thoughts...

Americans do seem to say things which make the English notice England.

I found it quite easy to carry on a casual conversation it was as if my real feelings were down fathoms deep in my mind and what we said was just a feathery surface spray.

...With stories even a page can take me hours, but the truth seems to flow out as fast as I can get it down.

Still, looking through the old volumes was soothing, because thinking of the past made the present seem a little less real.

I wanted so terribly to be good to him.

If you love people, you take them on trust.

Cruel blows of fate call for extreme kindness in the family circle.

Like many other much-loved humans, they believed that they owned their dogs, instead of realizing that their dogs owned them.

Oh, comfortable cocoa!

But some characters in books are really real--Jane Austen's are; and I know those five Bennets at the opening of Pride and Prejudice, simply waiting to raven the young men at Netherfield Park, are not giving one thought to the real facts of marriage.

It came to me that Hyde Park has never belonged to London - that it has always been , in spirit, a stretch of countryside; and that it links the Londons of all periods together most magically - by remaining forever unchanged at the heart of a ever-changing town.

The Devil's out of fashion.

I don't want to miss anything.

I think it [religion] is an art, the greatest one; an extension of the communion all the other arts attempt.

I get the feeling I do on finishing a novel with a brick-wall happy ending - I mean the kind of ending when you never think any more about the characters.

My imagination longs to dash ahead and plan developments; but I have noticed that when things happen in one's imaginings, they never happen in one's life, so I am curbing myself.

When you can't find your purpose in a day, make it to look after yourself.

Am I the only one wishing life away? Never caught up in the moment busy begging the past to stay Memories painted with much brighter ink; they tell me I loved, teach me how to think.

Stew's so comforting on a rainy day.

Walking down Belmotte was the oddest sensation-- every step took us deeper into the mist until at last it closed over our heads. It was like being drowned in the ghost of water.

I have really sinned. I am going to pause now, and sit here on the mound repenting in deepest shame...

I could hear rain still pouring from the gutters and a thin branch scraping against one of the windows; but the church seemed completely cut off from the restless day outside--just as I felt cut off from the church. I thought: I am a restlessness inside a stillness inside a restlessness.

I have found that sitting in a place where you have never sat before can be inspiring - I wrote my very best poem while sitting on the hen-house.

People do look different with their eyes closed, their features seem so much more sculptured.

My rotting brain had lied to me; of course talking would help. Of course my loving, caring friends telling me it would get better would help. They fed ropes down the hold I'd been digging, and even if they couldn't pull me up, they at least reminded me that there was a world beyond this, where I'd been before.

... for I know I shall be interrupted-- I shall want to be, really, because life is too exciting to sit still for long.

...surely I could give him--a sort of contentment... That isn't enough to give. Not for the giver.

I am surprised to see how much I have written; with stories even a page can take me hours, but the truth seems to flow out as fast as I can get it down.

Thinking of death--strange, beautiful, terrible and a long way off--made me feel happier than ever.

The tea was a comfort - and by that time I more than needed comfort.

My hand is very tired but I want to go on writing. I keep resting and thinking. All day I have been two people - the me imprisoned in yesterday and the me out here on the mound; and now there is a third me trying to get in - the me in what is going to happen next.

He laughed a little, in an odd, nervous kind of way. "Because if I don't get going soon, the whole impetus may die--and if that happens, well, I really shall consider a long, restful plunge into insanity. Sometimes the abyss yawns very attractively.

While I have been writing I have lived in the past, the light of it has been all around me...

The family - that dear octopus from whose tentacles we never quite escape, nor, in our inmost hearts, ever quite wish to.

Everything in the least connected with him has value for me; if someone even mentions his name it is like a little present to me-and I long to mention it myself

I believe it is customary to get one's washing over first in baths and bask afterwards; personally, I bask first. I have discovered that the first few minutes are the best and not to be wasted-- my brain always seethes with ideas and life suddenly looks much better than did.

Miserable people cannot afford to dislike each other

I felt guilty about that for a while until I realized everyone is just a collage of their favorite parts of other people.

We were restless for ages...After a while I heard an owl hooting and calmed myself by thinking of it flying over the dark fields – and then I remembered it would be pouncing on mice. I love owls, but I wish God had made them vegetarian.

A mist is rolling over the fields. Why is a summer mist romantic and autumn mist just sad?

I should rather like to tear these last pages out of the book. Shall I? No-a journal ought not to cheat.

The key to all knowledge comes in words of just one syllable, apparently.... There's only the last page left to write on. I'll fill it with words of just one syllable. I love. I have loved. I will love.

I could marry the Devil himself if he had some money.

Life is a bus ride, with only so many seats. It took me a long time to comprehend that sometimes people had to leave my life, to make room for the better ones, but once I understood that it became easier to let go, and I was surprised at just how quickly new, interesting people somehow found their way onto my bus.

Oh, wise young judge.

Certain unique books seem to be without forerunners or successors as far as their authors are concerned. Even though they may profoundly influence the work of other writers, for their creator they're complete, not leading anywhere.

Art could state very little - it's whole business is to evoke responses.

Prayer's a very tricky business.

It isn't a bit of use my pretending I'm not crying, because I am... Pause to mop up. Better now. Perhaps it would really be rather dull to be married and settled for life. Liar! It would be heaven.

... I was so happy that I wanted to be kind to everyone in the world.

Topaz was wonderfully patient - but sometimes I wonder if it is not only patience, but also a faint resemblance to cows.

It is odd how different a house feels when one is alone in it.

...perhaps it is loving that counts, not the being loved in return- that perhaps true loving can never know anything but happiness.

All I really want to write about is what happened just before he left. But if I let myself start with that I might forget some of the things which came first. And every word he said is of deepest value to me.

When I read a book, I put in all the imagination I can, so that it is almost like writing a book as well as reading it - or rather, it is like living it.

... but it is always dreadful when the pictures in front of one's eyes become meaningless and the real word is there instead and seems meaningless, too.

As long as I live I shall remember that silent minute.

She will want things to stay just as they are. She will never have the fun of hoping something wonderful and exiting may be just around the corner.

Your pain and anger will pass, but the guilt would remain with you for always.

Father says hot water can be as stimulating as an alcoholic drink and though I never come by one...I can well believe it.

There used to be two of us always on the look-out for life, talking to Miss Blossom at night, wondering, hoping; two Bronte-Jane Austen girls, poor but spirited, two Girls of Godsend Castle.

So sweet is this song that no one could resist it. For in it is all the passionate ache for the moonlight, and the great hunger of the sea, and the terror of desolate places,—all things that lure men to the unattainable. Omari tessala marax, tessala dodi phornepax amri radara poliax armana piliu amri radara piliu son; mari narya barbiton madara anaphax sarpedon andala hriliu Translation: I am the harlot that shaketh Death. This shaking giveth the Peace of Satiate Lust. Immortality jetteth from my skull, And music from my vulva. Immortality jetteth from my vulva also, For my Whoredom is a sweet scent like a seven-stringed instrument, Played unto God the Invisible, the all-ruler, That goeth along giving the shrill scream of orgasm. Every man that hath seen me forgetteth me never, and I appear oftentimes in the coals of the fire, and upon the smooth white skin of woman, and in the constancy of the waterfall, and in the emptiness of deserts and marshes, and upon great cliffs that look seaward; and in many strange places, where men seek me not. And many thousand times he beholdeth me not. And at last I smite myself into him as a vision smiteth into a stone, and whom I call must follow.

And at last father flung the rug off as if it were hampering him and strode over to the table saying, 'cocoa, cocoa!'-- it might have been the most magnificent drink in the world; which, personally, I think it is.

Everything in the least connected with him has value for me; if someone even mentions his name it is like a little present to me--and I long to mention it myself, I start subjects leading up to it, and then feel myself going red. I keep swearing to myself not to speak of him again- and then an opportunity occurs and I jump at it.

What I'd really hate would be the settled feeling, with nothing but happiness to look forward to. Of course no life is perfectly happy- Rose's children will probably get ill, the servants may be difficult, perhaps dear Mrs. Cotton will prove to be the teeniest fly in the ointment. (I should like to know what fly was originally in what ointment.) There are hundreds of worries and even sorrows that may come along, but- I think what I really mean is that Rose won't be wanting things to happen. She will want things to stay just as they are. She will never have the fun of hoping something wonderful and exciting may be just round the corner.

I write this sitting in the kitchen sink. That is, my feet are in it; the rest of me is on the draining-board, which I have padded with our dog's blanket and the tea-cosy. I can't say that I am really comfortable, and there is a depressing smell of carbolic soap, but this is the only part of the kitchen where there is any daylight left. And I have found that sitting in a place where you have never sat before can be inspiring - I wrote my very best poem while sitting on the hen-house. Though even that isn't a very good poem. I have decided my best poetry is so bad that I mustn't write any more of it. Drips from the roof are plopping into the water-butt by the back door. The view through the windows above the sink is excessively drear. Beyond the dank garden in the courtyard are the ruined walls on the edge of the moat. Beyond the moat, the boggy ploughed fields stretch to the leaden sky. I tell myself that all the rain we have had lately is good for nature, and that at any moment spring will surge on us. I try to see leaves on the trees and the courtyard filled with sunlight. Unfortunately, the more my mind's eye sees green and gold, the more drained of all colour does the twilight seem. It is comforting to look away from the windows and towards the kitchen fire, near which my sister Rose is ironing - though she obviously can't see properly, and it will be a pity if she scorches her only nightgown. (I have two, but one is minus its behind.) Rose looks particularly fetching by firelight because she is a pinkish person; her skin has a pink glow and her hair is pinkish gold, very light and feathery. Although I am rather used to her I know she is a beauty. She is nearly twenty-one and very bitter with life. I am seventeen, look younger, feel older. I am no beauty but I have a neatish face. I have just remarked to Rose that our situation is really rather romantic - two girls in this strange and lonely house. She replied that she saw nothing romantic about being shut up in a crumbling ruin surrounded by a sea of mud. I must admit that our home is an unreasonable place to live in. Yet I love it. The house itself was built in the time of Charles II, but it was grafted on to a fourteenth-century castle that had been damaged by Cromwell. The whole of our east wall was part of the castle; there are two round towers in it. The gatehouse is intact and a stretch of the old walls at their full height joins it to the house. And Belmotte Tower, all that remains of an even older castle, still stands on its mound close by. But I won't attempt to describe our peculiar home fully until I can see more time ahead of me than I do now. I am writing this journal partly to practise my newly acquired speed-writing and partly to teach myself how to write a novel - I intend to capture all our characters and put in conversations. It ought to be good for my style to dash along without much thought, as up to now my stories have been very stiff and self-conscious. The only time father obliged me by reading one of them, he said I combined stateliness with a desperate effort to be funny. He told me to relax and let the words flow out of me.