Literary Quotes

'Listen to the wind. It's a wild night.' 'A good night for ghosts to walk . . . All the devils in hell are abroad tonight.'

'Poor old Derek—we shall never know why he did it.' 'He won't be the first or the last fellow who's shot himself without being able to give a reason . . . '

Not exactly beautiful—no you wouldn't call her beautiful, but there was a kind of calamitous magic about her that you couldn't miss—that no man could miss.

. . . that strange inner sense of his had stirred and bid him be ready. Something interesting was happening or going to happen.

. . . with . . . an intense and inordinate interest in other people's lives. All his life, so to speak, he had sat in the front row of the stalls watching various dramas of human nature unfold before him. His role had always been that of the onlooker. Only now, with old age holding him in its clutch, he found himself increasingly critical of the drama submitted to him. He demanded now something a little out of the common.

Mr. Satterthwaite was glad that the young people had gone to bed. He was not fond of young people in herds. He thought them uninteresting and crude. They lacked subtlety and as life went he had become increasingly fond of subtleties.

'Pretty rotten to have to carry on as though nothing had happened.'

'Oh!' He said nothing else, but to Joyce that Oh! was one of the most comforting things she had ever heard. There was everything in it that couldn't be put into words.

The tears came into Joyce's eyes. They streamed down her cheeks. Nothing on earth could have kept them back.

'I must do something. There's the river, of course. I've often thought of that. Just finish everything. But it's so cold and wet. I don't think I'm brave enough. I'm not brave really.'

'Nobody could treat you as badly as you deserve.'

'I've heard you talk about getting a kick out of life. That's what you got out of me—and my dislike of you heightened it. You knew I hated you and you enjoyed it. When I let you kiss me yesterday, you were disappointed because I didn't flinch or wince. There's something brutal in you . . . something cruel—something that likes hurting. . . . '

'Why did you think I was marrying you? You knew I hated you.' 'You were marrying me because I could give you a jolly good time—and so I can.'

'I'm prepared to carry you off from this dreadful place here and now.'

'We've got to go through with it. But if only something would happen.'

'What on earth has got you into this mess?' 'Pride and a few other unprofitable emotions.'

'That's that,' she said. 'The last hope gone.'