Dodie Smith

I have found that sitting in a place where you have never sat before can be inspiring.

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

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

When I imagine changing places with her 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.

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

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

No, that was my privilege.

And what I thought most about was luxury. I had never realised before that it is more than just having things; it makes the very air feel different. And I felt different, breathing the air: relaxed, lazy, still sad but with the edge taken off the sadness. Perhaps the effect wears off in time, or perhaps you don't notice it if you are born to it, but it does seem to me that the climate of richness must always be a little dulling to the senses. Perhaps it takes the edge off joy as well as off sorrow.

That little glow of comfort lasted me right through the evening but was gone when I woke up next morning. Wakings are the worst times--almost before my eyes are open a great weight seems to roll on to my heart.

I wanted so terribly to be good to him.

Once I really looked at the sky, I wanted to go on looking; it seemed to draw me towards it and make me listen hard, though there was nothing to listen to, not so much as a twig was stirring.

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

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.

Stew's so comforting on a rainy day.

...[I]f 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.

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.

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

The Devil's out of fashion.