Dodie Smith citations

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

“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.”

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

“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 write this sitting in the kitchen sink.”

“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?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I was wandering around as usual, in my unpleasantly populated sub-conscious…”

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

“It is rather exciting to write by moonlight.”

“Truthfulness so often goes with ruthlessness.”

“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”

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

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

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

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

“So many of the loveliest things in England are melancholy.”

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

“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.”