Previous weeks' quotations

2010

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Jan 2010

6^th January

He started up the ladder, thinking, as he had so often thought before, that once he'd done this, he'd find himself on the other side of fear, like jumping through a paper hoop. And then he knew that he wouldn't. There would always be more paper hoops. All it would mean was that this time he hadn't let his fright make any difference to the thing he had to do, and next time--well, next time might be easier. On the other hand it might not.

Antonia Forest, Falconer's Lure (1957)

13^th January

Even with a microscope directed on a water-drop we find ourselves making interpretations which turn out to be rather coarse: for whereas under a weak lens you may seem to see a creature exhibiting an active voracity into which other smaller creatures actively play... a stronger lens reveals to you certain tiniest hairlets which make vortices for these victims while the swallower waits passively at his receipt of custom.

George Eliot, Middlemarch (1872)

20^th January

The social conscience does not spring fully equipped, like Athena from the head of Zeus. It is a matter of slow and halting growth. The great battle of human rights was... a silent battle for many years.

Violet Markham, Return Passage: The Autobiography of Violet Markham (1953)

27^th January

All those women artists wracked and torn, felled by life's blows, never finding their man or peace. I presume that the man and peace are mutually exclusive. One or the other would be bad enough for the avid biographer and other lovers of desperate women singers, but to get both a man of her dreams and peace would surely render a life unwritable.

Jenny Diski, 'Queening It', review in the London Review of Books, 25 June 2009. of David Brun-Lambert, Nina Simone: The Biography (2009)

Feb 2010

3^rd February

After all, in our culture, the meanings of "bold," "rebellious," and "dangerous"--adjectives that often come to mind when considering subversiveness--are practically built into our understanding of masculinity. In contract, femininity conjures up antonymns like "timid," "conventional," and "safe," which seem entirely incompatible with subversion.

Julia Serano, Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity (2007)

10^th February

[H]er dominating feature was her wavering, dithering uncertainty. She was incapable of making a clean, clear movement, and she was equally incapable of keeping still. She was irritating and pathetic at one and the same time.

Jane Duncan, My Friend Muriel (1959)

17^th February

It was a lesson he would never forget. He had started out trying to read technically, but then he had gotten so lost in the telling of the story that he forgot to look out for mechanics. That was the sign of a great work.

Sarah Schulman, The Mere Future (2009)

24^th February

He sang without thinking at all of the words of his song, but out of simple male pleasure in himself and the satisfactory, gentlemanly noise he was making.

Kate O'Brien, The Land of Spices (1941)

Mar 2010

3^rd March

Olive's early tales had been grimly sweet and unassuming. The coming - or return - of the fairytale opened some trapdoor in her imagination. Her writing became compulsive, fluent and daring.

A S Byatt, The Children's Book (2009)

10^th March

Now that it had once made its appearance that young gay face must often be seen at Chalford House. It had brought a happiness into her life which she had not known for sixteen years, the happiness of talking freely, cosily, and at length to another woman.

Nancy Mitford, Wigs on the Green (1935)

17^th March

When I first meet people I seem to display or deploy this inquisitiveness in the form of a sympathetic interest in their affairs but, with many of them, when this leads them to tell me all their secrets, my inquisitiveness is then satisfied and I begin to wish that they would go away. This is, I know, reprehensible and I am ashamed of it and because I am ashamed I screen it with a facade of more interest and sympathy than ever and this, of course, leads to the situation where the confider calls on me at every opportunity.

Jane Duncan, My Friends from Cairnton (1966)

24^th March

So the friends I did continue to see were of that odd, persistent variety that one sees largely through habit, and because they always have an address and telephone number.... while those passionately loved and wanted are swept into oblivion.

Margaret Drabble, A Summer Bird-Cage (1963)

31^st March

My excuse for recording all this is that it is of intense interest to me, and that as a fanatic for Arnold Bennett's Journal I am prepared to be absorbed in an entry telling me which sock he put on first.

James Agate, entry for 1 Aug 1937 EGO 3: being still more of the autobiography of James Agate (1938)

Apr 2010

7^th April

Discovering, surprised, at this period, that her shyness resented his loving "stand and deliver" attitude--for she thought shyness was over long ago--she invented a reserve store of thoughts that would do well enough for these occasions.

G B Stern, The Room (1922)

[No quotation for 14th April]

She was tired of her own aloofness. She had never wanted the detachment which circumstances forced on her and which her proud temperament exaggerated in acceptance.

Kate O'Brien, Pray for the Wanderer (1938)

28^th April

Walter could be trusted under any circumstances to behave admirably. It was a pity that with his great qualities, his unselfishness and honor, his intelligence and sensibility, he should be so unlovable.

W Somerset Maugham, The Painted Veil (1925)

May 2010

5^th May

[A]lthough I do not know why this should be, I find it irritating to feel sorry for someone whom I do not basically like. It seems to me to be a paradoxical position to feel a sort of sympathy for someone and yet, at the same time, to feel active dislike for that person.

Jane Duncan, My Friends from Cairnton (1966)

12^th May

[I]t was not conceivable to her, whose own soul was an overcrowded gathering of small worried considerations for other people and what might affect them and what might hurt them, that anyone should behave boldly and crudely, following in the simple track of selfishness.

G B Stern, A Lion in the Garden (1940)

19^th May

[S]he hadn't actually said anything objectionable at all. Instead, I suspected, her talent was to drive other people to the borders of objectionability and beyond.

Susan Lanigan, A Trifle (2010)

26^th May

When he was wondering, he was a likeable, congenial, and sociable person. When he had stopped wondering and was convinced that he knew the answer, he became stubbon and stern.

Jane Smiley, Private Life (2010)

Jun 2010

2^nd June

[W]e are the kind of people, I realised--whatever our distant ancestors' religion--who do not carry on traditions, who do not do things just because someone has done them before.

Barbara Ehrenreich, 'Cultural Baggage' (1992), in The Snarling Citizen: Essays (1995)

9^th June

I am extremely good...at maintaining silence when it pleases me, although I will not go so far as to say that it is a well-bred silence. Indeed, I think I am silent only when I have the hope that by listening to other people I may learn something that I want to know.

Jane Duncan, My Friend Cousin Emmie (1964)

It is seldom safe to confide in lonely people. Their very loneliness requires the importance of making known the confidence, at hinting at its existence and source, if not actually divulging it.

Elizabeth Taylor, At Mrs Lippincote's (1945)

23^rd June

It may be true that the cult of self is at odds with the �forbearance, consideration for another and unselfishness� that marriage demands � but it is worth remembering that for centuries women were trained up in self-denial and kindheartedness, yet had no grounds for complaint if these sterling virtues were missing in their men.

Amanda Vickery, Love and marriage, English-style, review of Maureen Waller, The English Marriage: Tales of Love, Money and Adultery (2009), in The Times Literary Supplement, 13 Jan 2010

30^th June

[S]he liked life to move to a gracious rhythm and this was her weakness and her strength. Little jars and checks were so distasteful that she avoided problems which ought to have been faced, but she also avoided the state of mind which might produce them.

E H Young, Celia (1937)

Ju1 2010

7^th July

He was not prepared to let any of us risk anything that, if not well done, would make a fool of him. He expected us to be highly successful, much liked, and to marry well, but he expected us to do all this with an unobtrusiveness which could never bring shame on his own head

Frances Donaldson, Child of the Twenties (1959)

14^th July

These are the people who, knowing that if they give money to refugees, jobs to deserving friends or time to the aged they would only be building up their own moral ego: and they consequently refrain. What they overlook is that to the hungry refugee, the down-at-heel friend and the lonely old crone the quality of their motives is not of so much interest compared to the money, the job, or the chance to talk. It is quite fantastic how the purely descriptive phrase "do-gooder" has obscured the simple fact that, moral compensation or no, many do gooders actually do good

Katharine Whitehorn, Roundabout (1962)

21^st July

I think she had to tell me about it in order to make it real and convincing for herself. A lot of people seem to think that an idea that is in their own minds only is not quite real and, to give it reality, they have to try it on some dog.

Jane Duncan, My Friend Martha's Aunt (1962)