Enid Bagnold Quotes & Sayings

An only child is never twelve. — Enid Bagnold

If a dog doesn't put you first where are you both? In what relation? A dog needs God. It lives by your glances, your wishes. It even shares your humor. This happens about the fifth year. If it doesn't happen you are only keeping an animal. — Enid Bagnold

In marriage there are no manners to keep up, and beneath the wildest accusations no real criticism. Each is familiar with that ancient child in the other who may erupt again. We are not ridiculous to ourselves. We are ageless. That is the luxury of the wedding ring. — Enid Bagnold

Isn't the fear of pain next brother to pain itself? — Enid Bagnold

It's not till sex has died out between a man and a woman that they can really love. And now I mean affection. Now I mean to be fond of (as one is fond of oneself) -to hope, to be disappointed, to live inside the other heart. When I look back on the pain of sex, the love like a wild fox so ready to bite, the antagonism that sits like a twin beside love, and contrast it with affection, so deeply unrepeatable, of two people who have lived a life together (and of whom one must die) it's the affection I find richer. It's that I would have again. Not all those doubtful rainbow colors. — Enid Bagnold

A father is always making his baby into a little woman. And when she is a woman he turns her back again. — Enid Bagnold

One's palate is reborn every morning! — Enid Bagnold

She saw herself alone, alive and doomed, strong and helpless, passing in a line of women, her mother before her, the child Lucy, behind, women walking on a temple frieze, Greek women in fluttering robes rounding a vase's girth for ever. — Enid Bagnold

From birth to death we are alone ... — Enid Bagnold

Who wants to become a writer? And why? Because it's the answer to everything ... It's the streaming reason for living. To note, to pin down, to build up, to create, to be astonished at nothing, to cherish the oddities, to let nothing go down the drain, to make something, to make a great flower out of life, even if it's a cactus. — Enid Bagnold

I don't like people," said Velvet. " ... I only like horses. — Enid Bagnold

The Press blew, the public stared, hands flew out like a million little fishes after bread. — Enid Bagnold

He was white in bold seas, ans black in continents... — Enid Bagnold

And now, finished with that puzzling mixture of insane intimacy and isolation which is notoriety, Velvet was able to get on quietly to her next adventures. — Enid Bagnold

One can lie, but truth is more interesting. — Enid Bagnold

Marriage. The beginning and the end are wonderful. But the middle part is hell. — Enid Bagnold

Before you fall asleep everyday, say something positive to yourself. — Enid Bagnold

But now, at the table, behind the fall of the tablecloth, behind the sheath of skin, hanging head downwards between cliffs of bone, was the baby, its arms all but clasped about its neck, its face aslant upon its arms, hair painted upon its skull, closed, secret eyes, a diver poised in albumen, ancient and epic, shot with delicate spasms, as old as Pharaoh in its tomb. — Enid Bagnold

It was March. The days of March creeping gustily on like something that man couldn't hinder and God wouldn't hurry. — Enid Bagnold

Dead news like dead love has no phoenix in its ashes. — Enid Bagnold

I know I feel like Gulliver sometimes, weighed down by little men. There are so many people in this house, I'm a queen bee, with every muscle dragging. I'm the heart of a cluster, black, dripping, sucking, hanging. — Enid Bagnold

Judges don't age; time decorates them. — Enid Bagnold

In a strange way', she thought, 'these absences suit my nature though not my heart. I love him, I miss him, but I have time to put on my humanity again. — Enid Bagnold

When a man goes through six years training to be a doctor he will never be the same. He knows too much. — Enid Bagnold

By seven o'clock even the long corridor was as dim as the alley outside. No one thought of shutting the windows - I doubt whether they will shut...and the fog rolled over the sill in banks and round the open glass doors, till even the white cap of a Sister could hardly be seen as she passed. — Enid Bagnold

I am not a born writer, but I was born a writer. — Enid Bagnold

You always was a nice chap," said Mrs. Brown. "On'y I'm so buried under me fat I feel half ashamed to tell you so. Love don't seem dainty on a fat woman. Nothin's going to break up this home not even if you lose yer head, but it'll make it easier if you keep it. On'y leave that child to me. She's got more to come. You think the Grand National's the end of all things, but a child that can do that can do more when she's grown. On'y keep her level, keep her going quiet. We'll live this down presently an' you'll see — Enid Bagnold

But I had been in love pretty often and I didn't think it stood the wear and tear. — Enid Bagnold

There may be wonder in money, but, dear God, there is money in wonder. — Enid Bagnold

You will be old-fashioned one day. It's more shocking than getting old. — Enid Bagnold

The dangerous thing about hate is that it seems so reasonable. — Enid Bagnold

I have said before that the long corridor is wonderful. In the winter afternoons and evenings, when the mist rolled up and down over the tiles like the smoke in a tunnel, when one walked almost in darkness and peered into the then forbidden wards, when dwarfs coming from the G block grew larger and larger until the A block turned them into beings of one's own size, the corridor always made a special impression on me. — Enid Bagnold

Sometimes in the late evenings one walks busily up and down the ward doing this and that, forgetting that there is anything beyond the drawn blinds, engrossed in the patients, one's tasks - bed-making, washing, one errand and another - and then suddenly a blind will blow out and almost up to the ceiling, and through it you will catch a glimpse that makes you gasp, of a black night crossed with bladed searchlights, of a moon behind a crooked tree.
The lifting of the blind is a miracle; I do not believe in the wind. — Enid Bagnold

The pleasure of one's effect on other people still exists in age - what's called making a hit. But the hit is much rarer and made of different stuff. — Enid Bagnold

Why do birds sing in the morning? It's the triumphant shout: 'We got through another night!' — Enid Bagnold

One never knows when one is old for certain. — Enid Bagnold

A landscape glittered behind her voice. There were icicles in it and savage fields of ice, great storms boiling over a flat countryside striped with white rails - a chessboard beneath a storm. Horses were stretched forever at the gallop. Tiny men in silk were brave beyond bearing and sat on the horses like embryos with their knees in their mouths. The gorgeous names of horses were cried from mouth to mouth and circulated in a steam of fame. Lottery, The Hermit, the great mare Sceptre; the glorious ancestress Pocahontas, whose blood ran down like time into her flying children; Easter Hero, the Lamb, that pony stallion. — Enid Bagnold

If I had my life over again[, ] I'd have thought more about words. And thought about them earlier. — Enid Bagnold

I shall continue to explore-the astonishment of living. — Enid Bagnold

Pity is exhaustible. What a terrible discovery! — Enid Bagnold

Let this serve as an axiom to every lover: A woman who refuses lunch refuses everything. — Enid Bagnold

Sex
the great inequality, the great miscalculator, the great Irritator. — Enid Bagnold

The children seemed to cast their Precursors like shadows about the house, sometimes tangibly, in the sound of a voice, sometimes by suggestion, because it was striking the hour for their return from a walk, sometimes mysteriously, because inside the shell of their mother's head the children were painted like angels on the roof of a chapel. — Enid Bagnold

If death becomes cheap it is the watcher, not the dying, who is poisoned. — Enid Bagnold

The theatre is a gross art, built in sweeps and over-emphasis. Compromise is its second name. — Enid Bagnold

They went together to the pond. The frogs, frozen by the movement, sat still. Fourteen golden eyes like nuggets gleamed unwinking from the margin. Some squatted on dead reeds and immersed branches. Tranced by the half-apprehended movement above them they relied for safety upon immobility. Some hung by one slim hand like children to a raft. All had been stricken to stone by the human appearance. Only the sun, shifting in the sky, tickled the fire in the nuggets in their green heads. — Enid Bagnold

She'd ride like a piece of lightning. No more weight'n a piece of lightning. — Enid Bagnold

After forty years of marriage we still stood with broken swords in our hands. — Enid Bagnold

Suddenly, as they walked with their buckets, it was not the child in each face that she sought, but the Wonder that had raised itself on to its two feet, that had learnt to walk, to run, that had spoken, that had got in touch with life under her hand. — Enid Bagnold

As for death one gets used to it, even if it's only other people's death you get used to. — Enid Bagnold

Things come suitable to the time. — Enid Bagnold

Who wants to become a writer? And why? ... It's the streaming reason for living. To note, to pin down, to build up, to create, to be astonished at nothing, to cherish the oddities, to let nothing go down the drain, to make something, to make a great flower of life, even if it's a cactus. — Enid Bagnold