Dodie Quotes & Sayings

Contemplation seems to be about the only luxury that costs nothing. — Dodie Smith

I wanted so terribly to be good to him. — Dodie Smith

Perhaps what you call conventionality, I call decency. — Dodie Smith

All of a sudden we saw a high, round tower in the distance, on a little hill. Father instantly decided that we must explore it, though mother wasn't enthusiastic. It was difficult to find because the little roads twisted and woods and villages kept hiding it from us, but every few minutes we caught a glimpse of it. — Dodie Smith

Oh, I have just had an idea - after tea I shall attack myself with sandpaper. — Dodie Smith

I know all about the facts of life, and I don't think much of them. — Dodie Smith

Many dogs can understand almost every word humans say, while humans seldom learn to recognize more than half a dozen barks, if that. And barks are only a small part of the dog language. A wagging tail can mean so many things. Humans know that it means a dog is pleased, but not what a dog is saying about his pleasedness. — Dodie Smith

...[H]e's so good and good people are usually happy. But do happy things happen to the good, or can the good make happiness out of unhappiness? — Dodie Smith

Sometimes [the expression] old age has a kind of harrowing beauty. But elderly - ugh! — Dodie Smith

But her voice sounded wistful. It is one of her theories that a woman must never be jealous, never try to hold man against his will; but I could tell that she hadn't enjoyed seeing someone else bring father to life. — Dodie Smith

I wanted to know more about the young ... strange that though they laughed so loud, they so seldom smiled. Perhaps laughter was involuntary whereas smiling was part of an attitude to life. — Dodie Smith

Art could state very little - it's whole business is to evoke responses. — Dodie Smith

I love you, I love you, I love you. ~Cassandra
— Dodie Smith

All I really want to write about is what happened just before he left. But if I let myself start with that I might forget some of the things which came first. And every word he said is of deepest value to me. — Dodie Smith

It was so nice that Simon was here for it - tell him I enjoyed every minute - ' it was glorious writing that - almost like telling him I was glad he'd kissed me. But after I'd posted the letter I was worried in case he guessed what I'd meant. — Dodie Smith

Topaz was wonderfully patient - but sometimes I wonder if it is not only patience, but also a faint resemblance to cows. — Dodie Smith

She is a girl who cannot walk her troubles off, or work them off; she is a girl to sit around and glare. — Dodie Smith

I should rather like to tear these last pages out of the book. Shall I? No-a journal ought not to cheat. — Dodie Smith

With stories even a page can take me hours, but the truth seems to flow out as fast as I can get it down. — Dodie Smith

But I can't see how anyone could believe that you killed the bear with a pitchfork,' I said.
'I didn't. I only wounded it - badly, I think, but not enough to put it out of action. It came blundering towards me, I stepped aside and it crashed head-first into the river - I could hear it threshing about in the darkness. I picked up a big stone - poor brute, I hated to do it but I had to finish it off. It gave just one groan as the stone hit it and then went down. I held the lantern high; I could see the bubbles coming up. And then I saw the dark bulk of it under the water, being carried along by the current.'
'But you didn't have a lantern,' I said.
'He didn't have a bear,' said Topaz. — Dodie Smith

Just to be in love seemed the most blissful luxury I had ever known. The thought came to me that perhaps it is the loving that counts, not the being loved in return
that perhaps true loving can never know anything but happiness. For a moment I felt that I had discovered a great truth. — Dodie Smith

Even a broken heart doesn't warrant a waste of good paper. — Dodie Smith

For I know I shall be interrupted
I shall want to be, really, because life is too exciting to sit still for long. — Dodie Smith

Oh I daresay she can't help it - she's one of the women who oughn't be loved too kindly when they are some primitive desire for brutality makes them try to provoke it. — Dodie Smith

My hand is very tired but I want to go on writing. I keep resting and thinking. All day I have been two people - the me imprisoned in yesterday and the me out here on the mound; and now there is a third me trying to get in - the me in what is going to happen next. — Dodie Smith

I had found out in that glittering corridor off the ballroom that being with him could be more painful than being away from him. — Dodie Smith

I wonder if I'm being disloyal, if being with Didier means I'm forgetting about Jones. But every time I go in a drain, or past a church, I think of him. Every time I see a can of Coke, I think of Jones. And don't even start me on how I feel when I see department-store Santas.
A girl doesn't forget a guy like Jones in a big hurry. Even ow, when none of us are front-page news any longer, he's always in my head.
My name is Dodie.
Doe - as in don't change a thing (well, a couple of things I'd change).
Dee - as in delighted to have known you, Sebastian Worthington Jones.
Dodie Farnshaw. — Gabrielle Williams

Thinking of death
strange, beautiful, terrible and a long way off
made me feel happier than ever. — Dodie Smith

My imagination longs to dash ahead and plan developments; but I have noticed that when things happen in one's imagination, they never happen in one's life. — Dodie Smith I Capture The Castle

We lose more women to marriage than war, famine, and disease. — Smith Dodie

Long prayers are like nagging. — Dodie Smith

I still didn't believe him. And for the moment, I didn't much care one way or the other. My whole mind had swung back to Simon. — Dodie Smith

I am not so sure I should like the facts of life, but I have got over the bitter disappointment I felt when I first heard about them, ... — Dodie Smith I Capture The Castle

And yet as my eyes turned to Stephen facing the sunrise from Simon in the darkness of my mind, it was as if Simon had been the living face and Stephen's the one I was imagining - or a photograph, a painting, something beautiful but not really alive for me. My whole heart was so full of Simon that even my pity for Stephen wasn't quite real - it was only something I felt I ought to feel, more from my head than from my heart. And I knew I ought to pity him all the more because I could pity him so little. — Dodie Smith

A thousand pounds for clothes
when on thinks how long poor people could live on it! When one thinks how long we could live on it, for that matter! — Dodie Smith I Capture The Castle

It is the still, yellow kind of afternoon when one is apt to get stuck in a dream if one sits very quiet — Dodie Smith

Now, carols are always beautiful, but if you are sad they can make you feel sadder. (There are some people who always find beauty makes them feel sadder, which is a very mysterious thing.) — Dodie Smith

Why is summer mist romantic and autumn mist just sad? — Dodie Smith

Incidentally, I never felt less brisk in my life, because being looked at like that makes a person feel dizzy. — Dodie Smith

God - it's merely shorthand for where we come from, where we're going and what it's all about — Dodie Smith

As we drove I remembered how I had told myself I would make Simon happy. I didn't feel the same person. For I now knew that I had been stuffing myself up with a silly fairy tale, that I could never mean to him what Rose had meant. I think I knew it first as I watched his face while he listened to her singing, and then more and more, as he talked about the whole wretched business - not angrily or bitterly, but quietly and without ever saying a word against Rose. But most of all I knew it because a change in myself. Perhaps watching someone you love suffer can teach you more than suffering yourself can.
Long before we got back to the castle, with all my heart and for my own heart's ease as well as his, I would have given her back to him if I could. — Dodie Smith

I leaned against the carved banisters and listened to the music and felt quite different from any way I have ever felt before
softer, very beautiful and as if a great many men were in love with me and I might very easily be in love with them. — Dodie Smith

NOT long ago, there lived in London a young married couple of Dalmatian dogs named Pongo and Missis Pongo. (Missis had added Pongo's name to her own on their marriage, but was still called Missis by most people.) They were lucky enough to own a young married couple of humans named Mr. and Mrs. Dearly, who were gentle, obedient, and unusually intelligent - almost canine at times. They understood quite a number of barks: the barks for "Out, please!" "In, please!" "Hurry up with my dinner!" and "What about a walk?" And even when they could not understand, they could often guess - if looked at soulfully or scratched by an eager paw. Like many other much-loved humans, they believed that they owned their dogs, instead of realizing that their dogs owned them. Pongo and Missis found this touching and amusing and let their pets think it was true. — Dodie Smith

public display and operatic suffering - an in-your-face owning of one's vulnerability and fucked-upness to the point of embarrassing and offending tight-asses is a powerful feminist strategy. Writing is tough work, I don't see how anyone can really write from a position of weakness. Sometimes I may start out in that position, but the act of commandeering words flips me into a position of power. — Dodie Bellamy

Miserable people cannot afford to dislike each other — Dodie Smith

And I suspect that, to the eyes of love, love shows. I knew about you as well as about myself, almost from the beginning. — Dodie Smith

Oh, it is wonderful to wake up in the morning with things to look forward to! — Dodie Smith

Americans do seem to say things which make the English notice England. — Dodie Smith

[P]erhaps it is the loving that counts, not the being loved in return
that perhaps true loving can never know anything but happiness. — Dodie Smith I Capture The Castle

Father says hot water can be as stimulating as an alcoholic drink and though I never come by one ... I can well believe it. — Dodie Smith

I shouldn't think even millionaires could eat anything nicer than new bread and real butter and honey for tea. — Dodie Smith

Perhaps watching someone you love suffer can teach you even more than suffering yourself can. — Dodie Smith

As she only cries about once a year I really ought to have gone over and comforted her, but I wanted to set it all down here. I begin to see that writers are liable to become callous. — Dodie Smith

I really am just as discontented, but I don't seem to notice it so much. — Dodie Smith

I couldn't make it out - why you ever let me, I mean. I understand now. Things like that happen when you're in love with the wrong person. Worse things. Things you never forgive yourself for. — Dodie Smith

I was so happy that I wanted to be kind to everyone in the world. — Dodie Smith

It made no difference. Just to be in love
seemed the most blissful luxury I had ever known. The thought came to me that perhaps it is the loving that counts, not the being loved in return - that perhaps true loving can never know anything but true happiness. — Dodie Smith

Everything in the least connected with him has value for me; if someone even mentions his name it is like a little present to me
and I long to mention it myself, I start subjects leading up to it, and then feel myself going red. I keep swearing to myself not to speak of him again- and then an opportunity occurs and I jump at it. — Dodie Smith

Then I told myself that as I never gave the Church a thought when I was feeling happy, I could hardly expect it to do anything for me when I wasn't. You can't get insurance money without paying in premiums. — Dodie Smith

Ham with mustard is a meal of glory — Dodie Smith

Dodie: "Mama, Jamie's up on the hill and he's f***g a goat!"
Mama: "Well, it's Jamie's goat, ain't it?"
-Peter Manso illustrates the brash wit pervasive in the Brando family with this exchange between Dodie Brando, Marlon's mother, and her mother in-law. — Peter Manso

Was I the only woman in the world who, at my age - and after a lifetime of quite rampant independence - still did not quite feel grown up? — Dodie Smith

I heard Molly say, 'Our Mouse is a hundred miles away.' But I wasn't as far away as that; I was in a dimly lit street somewhere in Hampstead. — Dodie Smith

I could look at stationers' shops forever and ever. — Dodie Smith

At least we're companions in misfortune — Dodie Smith

Wakings are the worst times
almost before my eyes are open a great weight seems to roll on my heart. — Dodie Smith I Capture The Castle

Noble deeds and hot baths are the best cures for depression. — Dodie Smith

I could see he was nervous; at least, I thought I could, but then it struck me how little I know of him, or of Topaz or Rose or anyone in the world, really, except myself. — Dodie Smith

What is this insurmountable barrier round him? What's it made of? Where did it come from? — Dodie Smith

There is a connection between Dal mations and gipsies. Many people believe that it was the gipsies who first brought Dalmatians to England, long, long ago. And nothing like as long ago as that, there were gipsies who travelled round England with Dalmatians trained to do tricks. And these performing dogs earned money for the gipsies. — Dodie Smith

I like seeing people when they can't see me. — Dodie Smith

I think what I really mean is that [she] won't be WANTING things to happen. She will want things to say just as they are. She will never have the fun of hoping something wonderful and exciting may be just round the corner. — Dodie Smith I Capture The Castle

The table was a pool of candlelight -- so bright that the rest of the room seemed almost black, with the faces of the family portraits floating in the darkness. — Dodie Smith

Cruel blows of fate call for extreme kindness in the family circle. — Dodie Smith

The thought was horrible, yet fascinating. — Dodie Smith

I'm convinced England's overflowing with eccentric people, places, happenings. Indeed, you might say eccentricity's normal in England. — Dodie Smith

But the happiness you hoped to win for me will never be mine. — Dodie Smith

You're the kind of child who might develop a passion for Bach.
I told him I hadn't at school. The one Bach piece I learnt made me feel I was being repeatedly hit on the head with a teaspoon. — Dodie Smith

We used to manage quite well when she was away sitting for artists, because in those days we lived mostly on bread, vegetables and eggs; but now that we can afford some meat or even chickens, I keep coming to grief. I scrubbed some rather dirty-looking chops with soap which proved very lingering, and I did not take certain things out of a chicken that I ought to have done. Even — Dodie Smith

I think it [religion] is an art, the greatest one; an extension of the communion all the other arts attempt. — Dodie Smith

But some characters in books are really real
Jane Austen's are; and I know those five Bennets at the opening of Pride and Prejudice, simply waiting to raven the young men at Netherfield Park, are not giving one thought to the real facts of marriage. — Dodie Smith

Walking down Belmotte was the oddest sensation
every step took us deeper into the mist until at last it closed over our heads. It was like being drowned in the ghost of water. — Dodie Smith

How I wish I lived in a Jane Austen novel! — Dodie Smith

Another great luxury is letting myself cry - I always feel marvellously peaceful after that. But it is difficult to arrange times for it, as my face takes so long to recover; it isn't safe in the mornings if I am to look normal when I meeter father at lunch, and the afternoons are no better, as Thomas is home by five. It would be all right in bed at night but such a waste, as that is my happiest time. Days when father goes over to read in the Scoatney library are good crying days. — Dodie Smith

He laughed a little, in an odd, nervous kind of way. Because if I don't get going soon, the whole impetus may die
and if that happens, well, I really shall consider a long, restful plunge into insanity. Sometimes the abyss yawns very attractively. — Dodie Smith

The family - that dear octopus from whose tentacles we never quite escape, nor, in our inmost hearts, ever quite wish to. — Dodie Smith

And though I cannot honestly say I would ever turn my back on any luxury that I could come by, I do feel there is something a bit wrong in it. Perhaps that makes it all the more enjoyable. — Dodie Smith

Not in the least," I said. "I understand everything you've said. But - oh, Simon, I feel so resentful! Why should father make things so difficult? Why can't he say what he means plainly?" "Because there's so much that just can't be said plainly. Try describing what beauty is - plainly - and you'll see what I mean." Then he said that art could state very little - that its whole business was to evoke responses. And that without innovations and experiments - such as father's - all art would stagnate. "That's why one ought not to let oneself resent them - though I believe it's a normal instinct, probably due to subconscious fear of what we don't understand. — Dodie Smith

She will want things to stay just as they are. She will never have the fun of hoping something wonderful and exiting may be just around the corner. — Dodie Smith

said, "because he was at the British Museum. — Dodie Smith

I wonder if there isn't a catch about having plenty of money? Does it eventually take the pleasure out of things? — Dodie Smith

It is rather exciting to write by moonlight. — Dodie Smith

I decided that it was like the difference between the beautiful old Godsend graves and the new ones open to receive coffins (which I never can bear to look at); that time takes the ugliness and horror out of death and turns it into beauty. — Dodie Smith

Dodie could often be seen at the club, clutching a white terry-cloth towel in one hand, her cigarette holder in the other, as she pedaled away on one of the club's stationary bikes. — Lily Koppel

Like many other much-loved humans, they believed that they owned their dogs, instead of realizing that their dogs owned them. — Dodie Smith

Well, my paper has asked me to do a series: Lives of the Great Musicians, reading time 2 minutes. — Dodie Smith

Is that branch worrying you?" Simon asked her. "Would you like to change places? I hope you wouldn't because your hair looks so nice against the leaves — Dodie Smith

Of course, he sees creation as discovery. I mean, everything is already created, by the first cause
call it God if you like; everything is already there to be found. — Dodie Smith

People's clothes ought to be buried with them ... They oughtn't to be left behind to be despised. — Dodie Smith I Capture The Castle

Truthfulness so often goes with ruthlessness. — Dodie Smith