Helen Simonson Quotes & Sayings

Sometimes you can't fix everything," said Amina. "Life isn't always like books."
"No, it's not. — Helen Simonson

It's only now I realize how easy it was to do so on the backs of other women's sons. — Helen Simonson

How anyone could doubt the patriotism of my dachshunds is just shocking, — Helen Simonson

It was an old story so rubbed with retelling that the edges were blurry. — Helen Simonson

And after all, everyone needs a few flaws to make them real. — Helen Simonson

She remembered a sudden feeling of anger towards him, as if it were his fault that the sun and breeze did not restore him, and a swift shame in the recognition of her own selfish desire not to have to endure his decline. They — Helen Simonson

Unlike you, who must do a cost-benefit analysis of every human interaction," he said, "I have no idea what I hope to accomplish. I only know that I must try to see her. That's what love is about, Roger. It's when a woman drives all lucid thought from your head; when you are unable to contrive romantic stratagems, and the usual manipulations fail you; when all your carefully laid plans have no meaning and all you can do is stand mute in her presence. You hope she takes pity on you and drops a few words of kindness into the vacuum of your mind. — Helen Simonson

The age of great men, when a single mind of intelligence and vision might change the destiny of the world, was long gone. — Helen Simonson

There is often an inverse correlation between genius and personal hygiene. — Helen Simonson

Such an awful fragility of love he thought that plans are made and broken and remade in these gaps between rational behavior. — Helen Simonson

a minute,' said Roger. 'You must ask — Helen Simonson

Here he was dispensing them as advice when he had only just taken them in as revelation. So, he thought, do all men steal and display the shiny jackdaw treasure of other people's ideas. — Helen Simonson

I am not loitering" said the Major. "I am simply indulging in a few moments of pastoral solitude"... — Helen Simonson

It is the unexpected note that makes the poem. You, Hugh, are the unexpected note. (pg 554) — Helen Simonson

Clean of officious fence or hedge, Half-wild and wholly tame, The wise turf cloaks the white cliff-edge As when the Romans came. — Helen Simonson

So he dreams himself the life he cannot have?" "Exactly. But we, who can do anything, we refuse to live our dreams on the basis that they are not practical. So tell me, who is to be pitied more? — Helen Simonson

As I get older, I find myself insisting on my right to be philosophically sloppy. — Helen Simonson

In which local hero Colonel Arthur Pettigrew, of the British army in India, held off a train full of murderous thugs to rescue a local Maharajah's youngest wife. For his heroism, the Colonel was awarded a British Order of Merit and personally presented with a pair — Helen Simonson

Youth's lost companion may be the measured friend of old age, I hope", said Daniel. "I may write a poem on the subject."
"Dear God, it sounds more like a cross-stitched pillow than a poem," said Hugh. — Helen Simonson

Often, I think, thy don't believe in anything at all and they just want to prove to themselves that I don't really believe anything either. (The Vicar) — Helen Simonson

Aunt Agatha says there isn't going to be a war," said Daniel, coming in behind her, laughing. "And so of course there won't be. They would never dream of defying her. — Helen Simonson

We all pick and choose and make our religion our own, do we not? — Helen Simonson

Life does often get in the way of one's reading. — Helen Simonson

Her favourite summer memories were not of events themselves, of picnics, sea bathing, tennis afternoons and cricket matches, but of watching Hugh and Daniel enjoying them and locking into memory the delight in their faces and their open laughter. — Helen Simonson

Despite his attempts to maintain a vigorous structure of errands, golf games, visits, and meetings, there were sometimes days like this one, filled with rain and touched with a gnawing sense of parts missing from life. When the slick mud ran in the flower beds and the clouds smothered the light, he missed his wife. — Helen Simonson

The sky began to spit fat drops of rain and a cold gust of wind whipped dust and litter against his legs. The sadness vanished and he thought how glorious the day was. — Helen Simonson

He liked the clover, evidence of the country always pressing in close, quietly sabotaging anyone who tried to manicure nature into suburban submission. — Helen Simonson

There is nothing more corrosive to character than money. — Helen Simonson

He wondered whether it was his fault Roger had the perceptiveness of concrete. — Helen Simonson

But it's not enough to be in love. It's about how you spend your days, what you do together, who you choose as friends, and most of all it's what work you do ... Better to break both our hearts now than watch them wither away over time. — Helen Simonson

It also occurred to him that perhaps this only meant that the less he saw of people, the more kindly he felt toward them, and that this might explain his current mild exasperation with his many condolence-offering acquaintances. — Helen Simonson

The world is full of small ignorances. We must all do our best to ignore them and thereby keep them small, don't you think — Helen Simonson

It's so much easier to tell other people how to do their job than fix one's own shortcoming, isn't it? — Helen Simonson

He had never imagined so clearly the consequences of mailing a letter - the impossibility of retrieving it from the iron mouth of the box; the inevitability if its steady progress through the postal system; the passing from bag to bag and postman to postman until a lone man in a van pulls up to the door and pushes a small pile through the letterbox. It seemed suddenly horrible that one's words could not be taken back, one's thoughts allowed none of the remediation of speaking face to face. — Helen Simonson

He opened his mouth to say that she looked extremely beautiful and deserved armfuls of roses, but the words were lost in committee somewhere, shuffled aside by the parts of his head that worked full-time at avoiding ridicule. — Helen Simonson

he realized he had inspired a sense of trust and indebtedness that would make it entirely impossible for an honorable man to attempt to kiss her anytime soon. He cursed himself for a fool. It — Helen Simonson

He had forgotten that grief does not decline in a straight line or along a slow curve...almost as if his body contained a big pile of garden rubbish full of both heavy lumps of dirt and of sharp thorny brush that would stab him when he least expected it.
p 35 — Helen Simonson

You must know that I am entirely yours to command."
"I see chivalry lives on," she said.
"As long as there's no jousting involved, I'm your knight," he said. — Helen Simonson

While the lake lapped at their feet and the mountains absorbed their calls and the sky flung its blue parachute over their heads, he thought how wonderful it was that life was, after all, more simple than he had ever imagined. — Helen Simonson

The human race is all the same when it comes to romantic relations,' said the Major. 'A startling absence of impulse control combined with complete myopia. — Helen Simonson

Men these days expect their wives to be as dazzling as their mistresses."
That's shocking," said the Major. "How on earth will they tell them apart? — Helen Simonson

I believe there is a great deal too much mutual confession going on today, as if sharing one's problems somehow makes them go away. All it really does, of course, is increase the number of people who have to worry about a particular issue. — Helen Simonson

It took him a moment to realize that they had been painted to look like fingernails, and he sighed over the extraordinary range of female vanities. — Helen Simonson

I later realized that this is my view of passion: It is rooted in genuine friendship. Chemistry may be two strangers exchanging smoldering looks - but passion has to be able to survive at least a twenty-minute conversation! — Helen Simonson

He cursed himself for having assumed the weather would be sunny. Perhaps it was the result of evolution, he thought
some adaptive gene that allowed the English to go on making blithe outdoor plans in the face of almost certain rain. — Helen Simonson

I can't abide people who dislike dogs, — Helen Simonson

You cannot run away from what's in your heart. — Helen Simonson

It would be a primal offering of food from man to woman and a satisfyingly primitive declaration of intent. However, he mused, one could never be sure these days who would be offended by being handed a dead mallard bleeding from a breast full of tooth-breaking shot and sticky about the neck with dog saliva. — Helen Simonson

Do you really know what it means to be in love with an unsuitable woman?" "Is there any other kind? — Helen Simonson

She was of that certain age when the bloom of youth must give way to strength of character, but her face was handsome in its intelligent eyes and commanding smile, and her hair retained a youthful spring as it threatened to escape from its carefully pinned rolls. — Helen Simonson

I think I would make a most interesting widow," said Lucy. She smoothed a wayward ringlet of hair behind her ear and smiled. "Not that one would wish such a state on anyone, but a sensible woman might use the gravity of the position to great authority in these times."
Hugh was not sure of the correct conversational response to such an offer - if she had indeed just offered to be his widow. He was searching about for an answer when the train whistle blew (pg 473) — Helen Simonson

America wielded her huge power in the world with a brash confidence that reminded him of a toddler who has got hold of a hammer. — Helen Simonson

She looked at him and he read in her eyes a disappointment that he should have stooped to the dead relative excuse. Yet he was as entitled as the next man to use it. People did it all the time; it was understood that there was a defined window of availability beginning a decent few days after a funeral and continuing for no more than a couple of months. Of course, some people took dreadful advantage and a year later were still hauling around their dead relatives on their backs, showing them off to explain late tax payments and missed dentist appointments: something he would never do. — Helen Simonson

Oh, it's simple pragmatism, Dad. It's called the real world. If we refused to do business with the morally questionable, the deal volume would drop in half and the good guys like us would end up poor. Then where would we all be?" said Roger. "On a nice dry spit of land know as the moral high ground?" suggested the Major. — Helen Simonson

Memories were like tomb paintings, thought the Major, the colors still vivid no matter how many layers of mud and sand time deposited. Scrape at them and they come up all red and blazing. — Helen Simonson

My neighbor Alice Pierce is fond of singing folk music to her garden plants. Thinks it makes them grow or something. The Major had often wondered how a wailing rendition of 'Greensleeves' would encourage greater raspberry production but Alice insisted that it worked far better than chemical fertilizers, and she did produce several kinds of fruit in pie-worthy quantitites. No sense of pitch, but plenty of enthusiasm, he added. — Helen Simonson

We are all small-minded people, creeping about the earth grubbing for our own advantage and making the very mistakes for which we want to humiliate our neighbors. — Helen Simonson

He could not, in good conscience, promote any association with Daisy Green and her band of ladies. He could more easily recommend gang membership or fence-hopping into the polar bear enclosure at the Regents Park zoo. — Helen Simonson

I said we would be informal," said Agatha. "I did not say we would be eccentric. — Helen Simonson

I tell myself it does not matter what one reads
favorite authors, particular themes
as long as we read something. It is not even important to own the books. — Helen Simonson

I do not think you would be so quick to approve if it was your son," he said. The Major frowned as he tried to quell the immediate recognition that the young man was right. He fumbled for a reply that would be true but also helpful. "I do not mean to offend you," added Abdul Wahid.
"Not at all," said the Major. "You are not wrong - at least, in the abstract. I would be unhappy to think of my son becoming entangled in such a way and any people, including myself, may be guilty of a certain smug feeling that it would never happen in our families."
"I thought so," said Abdul Wahid with a grimace.
"Now, don't you get offended, either," said the Major. "What I'm trying to say is that I think that is how everyone feels in the abstract. But then life hands you something concrete - something concrete like little George - and abstracts have to go out the window. — Helen Simonson

Look here, it's all very tidy and convenient to see the world in black and white ... It's a particular passion of young men eager to sweep away their dusty elders. However, philosophical rigidity is usually combined with a complete lack of education or real-world experience, and it is often augmented with strange haircuts and an aversion to bathing. — Helen Simonson

Only sometimes when we pick and choose among the rules we discover later that we have set aside something precious in the process. — Helen Simonson

But if all else fails, I can always write her a sonnet." "A sonnet?" said Hugh. "No woman can resist having her name rhymed with a flower in iambic pentameter," said Daniel. — Helen Simonson

I don't believe the greatest views in the world are great because they are vast or exotic,' she said. 'I think their power comes from the knowledge that they do not change. You look at them and you know they have been the same for a thousand years. — Helen Simonson

Compromises are often built on their being unspoken. — Helen Simonson

You Anglo-Saxons have largely broken away from such dependence on family. Each generation feels perfectly free to act alone and you are not afraid. — Helen Simonson

Young people are always demanding respect instead of trying to earn it. In my day, respect was something to strive for. Something to be given, not taken. — Helen Simonson

earpiece in his ear. — Helen Simonson

He had always assumed gossip to be the malicious whispering of uncomfortable truths not the fabrication of absurdities. How was one to protect oneself against people making up things Was a life of careful impeccable behavior not enough in a world where inventions were passed around as fact — Helen Simonson

Passion is all very well, but it wouldn't do to spill the tea. — Helen Simonson

You are a wise man, Major, and I will consider your advice with great care - and humility." He finished his tea and rose from the table to go to his room. "But I must ask you, do you really understand what it means to be in love with an unsuitable woman?"
"My dear boy," said the Major. "Is there really any other kind? — Helen Simonson

grief does not decline in a straight line or along a slow curve like a graph in a child's math book. — Helen Simonson

Most of all I remember that what begins with drums and fife, flags and bunting, becomes too swiftly a long and grey winter of the spirit. — Helen Simonson

I know something of shame [ ... ] How can we not all feel it? We are all small-minded people, creeping about the earth grubbing for our own advantage and making the very mistakes for which we want to humiliate our neighbors. [ ... ] I think we wake up every day with high intentions and by dusk we have routinely fallen short. Sometimes I think God created the darkness just so he didn't have to look at us all the time. — Helen Simonson

The Major wished young men wouldn't think so much. It always seemed to result in absurd revolutionary movements or, as in the case of several of his former pupils, the production of very bad poetry. — Helen Simonson

You are not the first man to miss a woman's more subtle communication ... They think they are waving when we see only the calm sea, and pretty soon everybody drowns. — Helen Simonson

I am to be converted to the joys of knitting,' said Mrs. Ali, smiling at the Major.
'My condolences,' he said. — Helen Simonson

But of course we do not like to listen to our mothers," said Mrs. Ali, smiling. "At least, not until long after we are mothers ourselves. — Helen Simonson

I would prefer you did not apologize for anyone else," she said. "My father always says that if we were as quick to own our own faults as we are to apologize for those of others, society might truly advance. — Helen Simonson

Suffragettes!" whispered Agatha as if communicating a great scandal. "I'm quite sure invitations to tea are being quietly withdrawn all over the room. — Helen Simonson

Is it that our needs grew smaller?" asked Hugh. "Or is it just that the fear and deprivation makes one appreciate simple things more?" "I think our ability to be happy gets covered up by the years of petty rubbing along in the world, the getting ahead," said Daniel. "But war burns away all the years of decay, like an old penny dropped into vinegar. — Helen Simonson

It was the cheapest kind of rebuke, to call a woman ugly, but one to which small boys and grown men seemed equally quick to stoop when feeling challenged. — Helen Simonson

They sat a moment in embrace of silent mutual comfort, which was, she often thought, the reward of those long married. — Helen Simonson

It surprised him that his grief was sharper than in the past few days. He had forgotten that grief does not decline in a straight line or along a slow curve like a graph in a child's math book. Instead, it was almost as if his body contained a big pile of garden rubbish full both of heavy lumps of dirt and of sharp thorny brush that would stab him when he least expected it. — Helen Simonson

He envisaged her in the heaven he had learned about in childhood: a grassy place with blue sky and a light breeze. He could no longer picture the inhabitants with anything as ridiculous as wings. Instead he saw Nancy strolling in a simple sheath dress, her low shoes held in her hand and a shady tree beckoning her in the distance. The rest of the time, he could not hold on to this vision and she was only gone, like Bertie, and he was left to struggle on alone in the awful empty space of unbelief. — Helen Simonson

Ah well, there you go. Young people are always demanding respect instead of trying to earn it. In my day, respect was something to strive for. Something to be given, not taken. Major Pettigrew — Helen Simonson

I have produced no children of my own and my husband is dead," she replied, an acid tone in her voice. "Thus I am more to be pitied than revered. I am expected to give up the shop to my nephew, who will then be able to afford to bring a very good wife from Pakistan. In exchange, I will be given houseroom and no doubt, the honor of taking care of several small children of other family members."
The Major was silent. He was at once appalled and also reluctant to hear any more. This was why people usually talked about the weather. — Helen Simonson

I miss being a student," said Abdul Wahid. "I miss the passionate discussions with my friends, and most of all the hours among the books. — Helen Simonson

I wish you a strong heart and the love of family this afternoon. — Helen Simonson

...so Beatrice, who was tired of people feeling free to interrogate on her determination to live free of a husband, bit her lip and did not answer. — Helen Simonson

It was frustratingly common that children were no sooner gone from the nest and established in their own homes ... than they began to infantilize their own parents and wish them dead, or at least in assisted living. — Helen Simonson

My dear Mrs. Ali, I would hardly refer to you as old," he said. "You are in what I would call the very prime flowering of mature womanhood." It was a little grandiose but he hoped to surprise a blush. Instead she laughed out loud at him. "I have never heard anyone try to trowel such a thick layer of flattery on the wrinkles and fat deposits of advanced middle age, Major," she said. "I am fifty-eight years old and I think I have slipped beyond flowering. I can only hope now to dry out into one of those everlasting bouquets. — Helen Simonson

He was struck by the thought that he was often lonely, even in the midst of many friends. — Helen Simonson

My parents told me to marry for money,' said her husband. 'But I chose the love of a strong woman.'

'And look what trouble I turned out to be,' she said. — Helen Simonson

Ah yes, the dreaded one-way system ... He and Nancy had laughed later, imagining Dante redesigning Purgatory into a one-way system offering occasional glimpses of St. Peter and the pearly gates over two separate sets of dividing concrete barriers. — Helen Simonson

She gathered up a few thoughts of the lovelier parts of the afternoon and stowed them away in the back of her mind, where they might remind her at some future date that lovely afternoons do not survive the chill of dusk. — Helen Simonson

At our age, surely there are better things to sustain us, to sustain a marriage, than the brief flame of passion?" ... "You are mistaken, Ernest," she said at last. "There is only the passionate spark. Without it, two people living together may be lonelier than if they lived quite alone. — Helen Simonson

War does have a way of interfering with one's most closely held desires. — Helen Simonson

I admire your enthusiasm...but I cannot, in good conscience, assist you with any civic unrest.'
'Civic unrest? This is war, Major," said Alice, chuckling at him. 'Man the barricades and break out the Molotov cocktails! — Helen Simonson