Elspeth 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

Elspeth stood in the sun, letting it pour through her, watching the Kitten sleep. I want you. Elspeth felt depressed. She had never thought of herself as someone who would kill a beautiful white kitten while it napped. But apparently she was that sort of person. Don't you worry, Kitten. I'll put you right back. — Audrey Niffenegger

The pioneer kills what he loves. — Elspeth Huxley

He had never realized, while Elspeth was alive, the extent to which a thing had not completely happened until he told her about it. — Audrey Niffenegger

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

Teaching is so demanding, and you get so little support. That pinch will have done Olive no harm - probably a lot of good.'
'Do you really think so?'
'Yes,' said Matthew. But then he went on, rather sadly, 'But I suppose that's not the world we live in, with all these regulations and busybodies about.' He paused. 'I think you've struck a blow for sanity. Or rather, pinched one.'
She thought this very funny and laughed.
'I'm rather fed up with teaching anyway,' Elspeth said. — Alexander McCall Smith

I'm starved." -Juli
"How can you be starved? You just ate a huge bowl of popcorn." -Elspeth
"Popcorn isn't food, it's popcorn." -Vicki — Lynsay Sands

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

habits. HSM members — Elspeth Muir

[ ... 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

Odds of a worm migration coming this way - about a billion to one. Odds of Elspeth improving her behavior without help - about the same. Sleep well, young friends. — Bruce Coville

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

Even her name seemed empty, as though it had detached itself from her and was floating untethered in his mind. How am I supposed to live without you? It was not a matter of the body; his body would carry on as usual. The problem was located in the word how: he would live, but without Elspeth the flavour, the manner, the method of living were lost to him. He would have to relearn solitude. — Audrey Niffenegger

Aunt Elspeth and Auntie Grace stood in their doorway, ceremoniously, to watch me go, and I felt as if I were a ship with their hope on it, dropping down over the horizon. — Alice Munro

The kissed surprised him because it had been so long since he'd kissed anyone but Elspeth. It surprised Valentina because she had hardly ever kissed anyone that way - to her, kissing had always been more theoretical than physical. Afterwards she stood with her eyes closed, lips parted, face tilted. Robert thought, She's going to break my heart and I'm going to let her. — Audrey Niffenegger

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

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

I guess we both lose the bet. What bet Thomas asked entering the room.
Boxers or briefs Jeanne Louise answered. I was betting boxers and Elspeth thought briefs. Instead he went commando!!
So be warned ladies, don't assume they are wearing any undies!! — Lynsay Sands

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

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

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

You're Gideon's friend."
I laughed. Gideon's friend, of course. "Only because his mother pays me to hang out with him."
"Can she pay me?" Elspeth asked.
Iris, moving into the room, rolled her eyes at her sister. — Bethany Frenette

Matthew and Elspeth knew the Duke of Johannesburg, of course. Matthew had first met him some years earlier when he had gone to a party at Single-Malt House, the Duke's seat. Most of us have houses or flats, but dukes have seats, which conjures up an altogether more comfortable set of domestic arrangements. Professors have chairs, which are not necessarily as comfortable as seats, but better, perhaps, than the mere benches on which judges have to spend their working hours. Least fortunate, of course, are people who have posts or slots - arrangements suggestive of impermanence and discomfort. To say of somebody that "he occupies the post of" is to imply that he has a place, but that he should not become too ensconced as there are others only too ready to take his place, with all the enthusiasm of the would-be stylite, on that post. — Alexander McCall Smith

Your nakedness is the work of God the Creator. Let men admire it--and grow religious between your sheets. — Elspeth Marr

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 absorbed, disapproving regard of the middle-aged woman for her own face disappeared as he came up. ('The Snow Heart') — Elspeth Davie

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

She bent and placed a single daisy upon the grave. A simple white daisy. The plainest of flowers, perhaps the purest, Elspeth thought. It had cost next to nothing at all, and perhaps that was the point. She wasn't being cheap. She was being symbolic. In her mind, Andrea deserved only the unstained purity of the simplest of daisies, a daisy that was unsoiled by a wealth that couldn't find the money to have claimed her soul. — J.R. Tompkins