Smith More Castle Quotes & Sayings

And who says you always have to understand things? You can like them without understanding them
like 'em better sometimes. — Dodie Smith I Capture The Castle

Kayla jumped down off of the monkey bars. I thought she was going to apologize. Instead, she pointed at Becky and laughed as hard as she could.
My blood boiled. I glared at her so hard that I thought that lasers would shoot out of my eyes and burn a hole through her. Without thinking, I stood up, walked over to Kayla, and slapped her across the face as hard as I could. I had never hit anyone who wasn't my brother and sister, and I had never hit them as hard as I hit her. My hand stung. I grabbed it and held it between my knees. Kayla squealed, grabbed her face, and ran home. Ashley just looked at me. I reached for Becky, helped her to her feet, and we ran to our house.

- The Castle Park Kids — Laura Smith

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

You have your orders," Mab shouted at the guards. "To the Deeps with her."
The men led me from the great hall, taking me along a series of corridors to the back of the castle, then winding through another long corridor and into a spiraling stairwell that appeared to have no end. We went further and further down until finally it ended so deep in the ground it felt like a grave. My pulse quickened as we reached the bottom.
A single dark door lay ahead. — H.D. 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

When I was a kid, I just read and read. We were lucky enough to have gone to England and had a whole bunch of Penguin Puffins books, like The Land of Green Ginger by Noel Langley, which is hilarious. I would love to be able to write a book like that, but I don't know that I have a humorous bone in my body when it comes to writing. Once on a Time by A.A. Milne. I read a lot of old, old fantasy stuff. The Carbonelbooks by Barbara Sleigh. Then when I got a little older I loved Zilpha Keatley Snyder. I was a big fan of romance and when I got a little bit older I would read a Harlequin romance or a Georgette Heyer novel and then David Copperfield, and then another genre book and then Irving Stone's The Agony and the Ecstasy. I was that kind of reader. One book that I loved was I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith. I loved voice and that book had it in spades. And then of course I grew into loving Jane Eyre. — Franny Billingsley

There was a wonderful atmosphere of gentle age, a smell of flowers and beeswax, sweet yet faintly sour and musty; a smell that makes you feel very tender towards the past. — Dodie Smith I Capture The Castle

That little glow of comfort lasted me right through the evening but was gone when I woke up next morning. Wakings are the worst times
almost before my eyes are open a great weight seems to roll on to my heart. — Dodie Smith I Capture The Castle

Give me the child. Through dangers untold and hardships unnumbered, I have fought my way here to the castle beyond the Goblin City to take back the child you have stolen. For my will is as strong as yours, and my kingdom is as great.
You have no power over me — A.C.H. 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

Oh, I always employ shock tactics with men of genius," said Mrs. Cotton. "And one has to employ them in public or the men of genius bolt. — Dodie Smith I Capture The Castle

Whatever it is, it can't possibly be as important as the Italian Concerto. Now let's get to work."
We work for three and a half hell-bent hours, until the keys are literally smeared with blood and my mind has been bleached to a glorious blankness, a lunar eclipse of the soul. The music is a castle I conjure around myself, a fortress of notes no feeling can storm. — Hilary T. Smith

Oh, it was an artful place
it must make people who have money want to spend it madly! — Dodie Smith I Capture The Castle

We burnt the salt and the herbs (in America it is correct to drop the h in herbs
it does sound odd.) — Dodie Smith I Capture The Castle

I believe it is customary to get get one's washing over first in baths and bask afterwards; personally, I bask first. I have discovered that the first few minutes are the best and not to be wasted
my brain always seethes with ideas and life suddenly looks much better than it did ... So I bask first, wash second and then read as long as the hot water holds out. The last stage of a bath, when the water is cooling and there is nothing to look forward to, can be pretty disillusioning. — Dodie Smith I Capture The Castle

There used to be two of us always on the look-out for life, talking to Miss Blossom at night, wondering, hoping; two Bronte-Jane Austen girls, poor but spirited, two Girls of Godsend Castle. — Dodie Smith

Perhaps he finds beauty saddening
I do myself sometimes. Once when I was quite little I asked father why this was and he explained that it was due to our knowledge of beauty's evanescence, which reminds us that we ourselves shall die. — Dodie Smith I Capture The Castle

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

When I imagine changing places with her I get the feeling I do on finishing a novel with a brick-wall happy ending
I mean the kind of ending when you never think any more about the characters. — Dodie Smith I Capture The Castle

The Girl Guides kept up their activities as well, giving Elizabeth an unexpectedly democratic experience when refugees from London's bomb-ravaged East End were taken in by families on the Windsor estate and joined the troop. The girls earned their cooking badges, with instruction from a castle housekeeper, by baking cakes and scones (a talent Elizabeth would later display for a U.S. president) and making stew and soup. With their Cockney accents and rough ways, the refugees gave the future Queen no deference, calling her Lilibet, the nickname even daughters of aristocrats were forbidden to use, and compelling her to wash dishes in an oily tub of water — Sally Bedell Smith

And by the way, if she constantly leaving you messages that she's in another castle...she's just not that into you. Move on. — Eric Smith

She was so scared that she forgot to be a contralto. — Dodie Smith I Capture The Castle

How did you get into the castle, Alexandre, son of Gilles Smith?"
Sand shrugged. "A saint kidnapped me from his shrine and put me into a fireplace here. So I guess the answer is, a miracle of Saint Melor. Or so I think. He has not told me."
"If you are trying to antagonize him, you are doing a good job," Perrotte whispered.
Sand scuffed his shoe at her. "I'm just telling the truth!"
"You're very good at telling it in the most maddening way possible."
"Thank you? — Merrie Haskell

What is it about the English countryside
why is the beauty so much more than visual? Why does it touch one so? — Dodie Smith I Capture The Castle

This desire for solitude often overcomes her at house-cleaning times. — Dodie Smith I Capture The Castle

And they are like a drug, one needs them oftener and oftener and has to make them more and more exciting - until at last one's imagination won't work at all. — Dodie Smith

I don't want to miss anything. — 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

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

[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

The next morning, I woke up to hear Becky moaning and rustling around in her bed covers.
"I'm so itchy!" she cried.
"So scratch!" I said, groggily, but suddenly, I felt itchy too.
So, I started scratching my legs. They felt better until I stopped scratching. Then, it started to burn. I threw back the covers and saw that my legs were covered in red bumps.
"My legs!" I yelled.
Becky looked over at me. Then, she pulled back her covers. Her legs were even worse. She gasped.
"Mom!" I cried.
Mom came in. She was ready for work, wearing her dress shirt and gym shorts. She only had to dress up the top half of her body in case she had to use her webcam to talk to her boss.
"What is it?" she asked.
"Look!" I said, showing her our legs.
"Oh no! That's poison ivy!" she cried, "Where were you guys playing yesterday?"
"The woods," I said.
"You must have been sitting in it," she said.

- The Castle Park Kids — Laura 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

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

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

I am inspired by great food, theater, books, the beach, black-and-white photography, and great vocalists, like Dianne Reeves, Alice Smith, and Shirley Horn. I am inspired by my mentor Diana Castle, who is guiding me towards a truth and honesty in my life and work that I have always longed for. — Erica Tazel

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