Dodie Smith

Dramatist

1896-05-03

Books by Dodie Smith

I Capture the Castle
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The Hundred and One Dalmatians
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The starlight barking
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Quotes by Dodie Smith

I am not so sure I should like the facts of life, but I have got over the bitter disappointment I felt when I first heard about them,...
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...I could never explain how the image and the reality merge, and how they somehow extend and beautify each other.
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The family - that dear octopus from whose tentacles we never quite escape, nor, in our inmost hearts, ever quite wish to.
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Cruel blows of fate call for extreme kindness in the family circle.
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Even a broken heart doesn't warrant a waste of good paper.
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I could marry the Devil himself if he had some money.
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I wonder if there isn't a catch about having plenty of money? Does it eventually take the pleasure out of things?
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... there is something revolting about the way girls' minds so often jump to marriage long before they jump to love. And most of those minds are shut to what marriage really means.
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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.
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There is something revolting about the way girls' minds so often jump to marriage long before they jump to love.
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Am I really admitting that my sister is determined to marry a man she has only seen once and doesn't much like the look of? It is half real and half pretense - and I have an idea that it is a game most girls play when they meet an eligible young men. They just...wonder.
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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.
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And no bathroom on earth will make up for marrying a bearded man you hate.
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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.
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In addition, I think religion has a chance of a look-in whenever the mind craves solace in music or poetry-- in any form of art at all. Personally, I think it is an art, the greatest one; an extension of the communication all the other arts attempt.
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...he talked quite naturally while we ate — about the difficulty of finding words to describe the luminous mist, and why one has the desire to describe beauty.Perhaps it's an attempt to possess it, I said.Or be possessed by it; perhaps that's the same thing, really. I suppose it's the complete identification with beauty one's seeking.The mist grew brighter and brighter.
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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.
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Rose doesn't like the flat country, but I always did – flat country seems to give the sky such a chance.
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My God - it's a green child! said the American. What is this place - the House of Usher?
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I like seeing people when they can't see me.
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