Quotes from book
I Capture the Castle

I Capture the Castle
Dodie Smith

I Capture the Castle is the first novel by the British author Dodie Smith, written during the Second World War when she and her husband Alec Beesley were living in California. She longed for home and wrote of a happier time, unspecified in the novel apart from a reference to living in the 1930s. Smith was already an established playwright and later became famous for writing the children's classic The Hundred and One Dalmatians.

“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.”

Dodie Smith book I Capture the Castle

Source: I Capture the Castle

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

Dodie Smith book I Capture the Castle

Source: I Capture the Castle

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

Dodie Smith book I Capture the Castle

Source: I Capture the Castle

“I wanted so terribly to be good to him.”

Dodie Smith book I Capture the Castle

Source: I Capture the Castle

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

Dodie Smith book I Capture the Castle

Source: I Capture the Castle