Elspeth Huxley Quotes & Sayings

The best way to find out things, if you come to think of it, is not to ask questions at all. If you fire off a question, it is like firing off a gun; bang it goes, and everything takes flight and runs for shelter. But if you sit quite still and pretend not to be looking, all the little facts will come and peck round your feet, situations will venture forth from thickets and intentions will creep out and sun themselves on a stone; and if you are very patient, you will see and understand a great deal more than a man with a gun. — Elspeth Huxley

The pioneer kills what he loves. — Elspeth Huxley

English tradition debars from dinner-table conversation almost all topics that might interest the conversers and insists upon strict adherence to banalities. — Elspeth Huxley

The Beatties were always arguing, it gave them an interest in life ... — Elspeth Huxley

When the present stung her, she sought her antidote in the future, which was as sure to hold achievement as the dying flower to hold the fruit when its petals wither. — Elspeth Huxley

[ ... vastly different peoples live and work side by side but rarely come together, like the arms of an egg beater that] whirled independently and never touched, so that perhaps one arm never knew the other was there; yet they were together, turned by the same handle, and the cake was mixed by both. — Elspeth Huxley

That's the way to tell a true story from a made-up one. A made-up story always has a neat and tidy end. But true stories don't end, at least until their heroes and heroines die, and not then really because the things they did and didn't do, sometimes live on. — Elspeth Huxley

They [zebras] looked like highly varnished animated toys. — Elspeth Huxley

Tilly was downcast; as with all perfectionists, it was the detail others might not notice that destroyed for her the pleasure of achievement. — Elspeth Huxley

What sorts of sin?
Any sort. When other people commit them, you are startled, but when you commit them yourself, they seem absolutely natural. — Elspeth Huxley

This was a moment of magic revealing to us all, for a few moments, a hidden world of grace and wonder beyond the one of which our eyes told us, a world that no words could delineate, as insubstanttial as a cloud, as iridescent as a dragon-fly and as innocent as the heart of a rose. — Elspeth Huxley

Dogs may be divided into two classes: those who are merely afraid of cattle and those who can't abide them. — Elspeth Huxley

You cannot sell a blemished apple in the supermarket, but you can sell a tasteless one provided it is shiny, smooth, even, uniform and bright. — Elspeth Huxley

Only man is not content to leave things as they are but must always be changing them, and when he has done so, is seldom satisfied with the result. — Elspeth Huxley

Africa is cruel ... it takes your heart and grinds it into powdered stone - and no-one minds — Elspeth Huxley

The great point about money was to convert it as quickly as possible into something you could use or enjoy. — Elspeth Huxley

How much does one imagine, how much observe? One can no more separate those functions than divide light from air, or wetness from water. — Elspeth Huxley

To deceive gracefully is the very essence of social life. One must start by deceiving oneself, and make a lifelong practice of deceiving others; if one does it well enough, in time one might even become an artist, the greatest illusionists of all. — Elspeth Huxley

One of the stock Sydney jokes is of the census-taker who enquires: 'How many children have you, ma'am?' 'Two living and three in Melbourne.' — Elspeth Huxley