"The family - that dear octopus from whose tentacles we never quite escape, nor, in our inmost hearts, ever quite wish to."
"I'm convinced England's overflowing with eccentric people, places, happenings. Indeed, you might say eccentricity's normal in England."
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Source: Dodie Smith (1963). “The New Moon with the Old”
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"I have found that sitting in a place where you have never sat before can be inspiring."
"Noble deeds and hot baths are the best cures for depression."
"He stood staring into the wood for a minute, then said: "What is it about the English countryside — why is the beauty so much more than visual? Why does it touch one so?" He sounded faintly sad. 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. Then he said I was probably too young to understand him; but I understood perfectly."
"Time takes the ugliness and horror out of death and turns it into beauty."
"It came to me that Hyde Park has never belonged to London - that it has always been , in spirit, a stretch of countryside; and that it links the Londons of all periods together most magically - by remaining forever unchanged at the heart of a ever-changing town."