The Light Years Quotes
"The day began at five to seven when the alarm clock went off and on and on until she quenched it."
"Sunlight refurbished the room – making toffee of the linoleum, turning the chips on the white enamel washstand jug slate blue."
"Seems to be going down a bit. Good thing I didn’t squeeze it."
"‘Full many a glorious morning have I seen,’ she muttered."
"Let me not to the marriage of true minds admit impediment."
"‘Darling Villy,’ he said three times before he came."
"China tea. I don’t know how you manage always to smell of violets and Chinatea."
"‘That’ll do,’ said Nanny sharply. ‘We don’t talk about things like that at mealtimes.’"
"I think they’re pretty, and I’ll need some things of my own for when I’m grown up."
"It’s because you don’t look what you’re doing."
"‘If you aren’t any of you careful I’ll go and live with Louise.'"
"People don’t have black walls, Polly, I should have thought you’d have known that."
"I can read French, but not so that I can understand it properly. Of course I can read it."
"I’m stupendously bored. I’ve put on a lot of rouge and I’m reading a book called The Painted Veil. It’s got sex in it. It’s nothing like as good as Persuasion.’"
"It’s pointless to make a map of somewhere that there is a map of already."
"Because, after all, she had Tennyson still – and Jack was dead."
"I don’t think you’ll be able to change the world, darling. Just look after your corner of it."
"Look thy last on all things lovely, every hour."
"It was just one of those times when the pain and what it was for balanced each other."
"No one would put beetroot and blue together on purpose."
"It was the holidays that she had hated in the peachy little flat in West Kensington."
"You are all I want. I would live in a wigwam with you or a seaside hotel."
"I marvel at it. I feel privileged to behold you."
"He’s mad about her, but that’s not the same thing at all."
"The object of the enterprise, Christopher, in case you hadn't realised, is to stop the cases slipping."
"She looked at him with streaming eyes. 'But I know you wanted a daughter.'"
"The best thing about the English is the way they can laugh at themselves."
"All Jews are perfectly capable of looking after themselves."
"He looked at her with tender kindness, almost as though they were lovers, and laid the baby in her arms."
"She looked at the tiny limp white body, and then reached out and touched its head. 'A girl. Hugh will be so sad.'"
"You don’t go on and on increasing your army if you don’t mean to fight."
"Then they both heard a car, which surely must be the doctor, and Rachel went to the window. 'He’s come!' she said. 'Isn’t that good?'"
"It was rotten luck that the second baby had been stillborn, but at least she had the other one."
"I can’t see why you couldn’t paint in Switzerland if you really wanted to."
"Everything’s different for women. I wonder why?"
"I still think you ought to be president. After all, you thought of it."
"I don’t mind us being poor – honestly! I don’t mind anything as long as I’m with you!"
"He’s impossible, but he’s the children’s father."
"You’d be a marvellous businessman. Everybody loves you."
"All I want is for him to love me, I don’t care about anything else."
"You can do anything for the glory of God, it doesn’t actually matter a bit what it is."
"The awful thing is that whatever we think won’t make the slightest difference. I find that very frightening."
"I suppose we’d better ask her what she wants."
"It’s quite a lot of the time you treat me like a child. I do so loathe it."
"If you love somebody, you want them to do what they want."
"Life was one great man trap, she thought, and sex, which obviously had to be pretty trapping for women to contemplate it at all considering what it actually came down to – hours and hours over the years of painful, unpleasant, and ultimately dull intimacies of an inexplicably unsatisfactory nature – was simply something that one exchanged for the comfort and security of being a couple and having in other ways a pleasant time."
"The idea that – the man – actually likes it, simply makes me feel worse about them."
"Don’t worry, old boy. It’s all up to the Czechs now, isn’t it? And they’ll have to give way. They’ve got no choice."
"You think I’m a windy obstinate old bugger, but you know I’m right."
"I’m not much of a cook – you don’t think she should be in hospital?"
"You’re very silent. Don’t you like my dress? I put it on specially for you. Aren’t I smart enough?"
"You’re entirely irresistible. I want you more than anything in the world."
"I’ve found consolation elsewhere from time to time that has seemed adequate – until now."
"It’s not any of that. If we are all going to be killed, I want to be with you."
"It’s all we can do, isn’t it? And it may not be for long. It may be the end – of everything."
"You know if the Czechs don’t accept Hitler’s ultimatum there will be."
"You’ve always known your own strength, haven’t you, but you know nothing about your own weakness: it’s high time you learned that."
"Only a very stupid person would think I was stupid."
"If you don't shut up, I'll knock your block off!"
"Guns were the last thing he wanted to have anything to do with."
"I feel rather dreading waking him with the prospect of a gas mask."
"I might want to do things whether I wanted to or not."
"I simply adore mine! I look so different in it."
"It’s not for the face at all, Miss Milliment, it’s for your body."
"She sat up and poured out some tea for both of them."
"You may not be able to get to London, or have a good enough other reason for getting there."
"They've probably been taught to make a Victoria sponge at their schools, but that will hardly do, will it?"
"The odd thistle or stone made no impression on his horny feet."
"Children have very good memories. Far better than yours."
"You have to promise – all of you – not to tell anyone else about it."
"That’s what ordinary life is, isn’t it? Carrying on as usual."
"You needn’t tell me. Simply write it down on a piece of paper and put it in my pencil box."
"I think if you say every night that you wish you believed in God, and there is one, he’ll hear you."
"I think it would count more if we had a service."
"I should have just given it to her – not talked about it."
"As long as nobody spoke, and no one moved, it was still the very end of peace …"
"It’s for what they went through last time there was a war, and because it was for nothing, she thought."
"She’s not angry with him, she’s afraid he will have to be in it. She’s so old-fashioned she thinks it’s simply men who have to fight and die; she doesn’t understand."
"The worst had come to the worst, and they were all behaving in much the same way as they would have if it hadn’t."
"‘Must have been a false alarm,’ Teddy said; he sounded disappointed."
"‘Don’t be so stupid, Neville!’ Lydia said crushingly. ‘People don’t go to beaches in wartime.’"
"‘I really resent being classed as a child,’ Louise said to Nora, as they made their way down to Mill Farm."
"‘Actresses aren’t necessary,’ Nora had said, while conceding that if there wasn’t going to be a war it wouldn’t matter so much what Louise did."
"‘You judge me all the time!’ she had cried. ‘So do you,’ Nora had retorted. ‘People do that with each other.’"
"‘Of course not!’ The innocent glare of denial silenced Louise."
"But you have a marvellous complexion – frightfully white and then pale pink, like a heroine in novels."
"Human nature’s not much cop, if you ask me. We wouldn’t be in such danger of having a war if it was."
"‘You were away most of the time.’ ‘Oh, well, the position is shortly to be reversed.’"