Quotes from A Town Like Alice

Nevil Shute ·  359 pages

Rating: (42.1K votes)


“I know you've taken risks to do these things. Do Please be careful."
"Don't worry about me," he said. "You've got enough troubles on your own plate, my word. But we'll come out all right, so long as we just keep alive, that's all we got to do. Just keep alive another two years, till the war's over.”
― Nevil Shute, quote from A Town Like Alice


“She looked at him in wonder. "Do people think of me like that? I only did what anybody could have done."
"That's as it may be," he replied. "The fact is, that you did it.”
― Nevil Shute, quote from A Town Like Alice


“It's no good going on living in the ashes of a dead happiness.”
― Nevil Shute, quote from A Town Like Alice


“It’s no good going on living in the ashes of a dead happiness.”
― Nevil Shute, quote from A Town Like Alice


“Men' s souls are naturally inclined to covetousness; but if ye be kind towards women and fear to wrong tgem, God is well acquainted with what ye do.”
― Nevil Shute, quote from A Town Like Alice



“People who spent the war in prison camps have written a lot of books about what a bad time they had, she said quietly, staring into the embers. they don't know what it was like, not being in a camp.”
― Nevil Shute, quote from A Town Like Alice


“it was so beautiful', he said. 'the Three Pagodas Pass must be one of the loveliest places in the world. you've got this broad valley with the river running down it, and the jungle forest, and the mountains....we used to sit by the river and watch the sun setting behind the mountains, sometimes, and say what a marvellous place it would be to come to for a holiday. however terrible a prison camp may be, it makes a difference if its beautiful.”
― Nevil Shute, quote from A Town Like Alice


“It was a gambler's action, but his whole life had probably been made up of gambles; it could hardly be otherwise in the outback.”
― Nevil Shute, quote from A Town Like Alice


“He said, "The spring was good enough for their mothers and their grandmothers before them. They will get ideas above their station in life if they have a well." She”
― Nevil Shute, quote from A Town Like Alice


“Leave-takings are stupid things, and best forgotten about as quickly as possible.”
― Nevil Shute, quote from A Town Like Alice



About the author

Nevil Shute
Born place: in London, England, The United Kingdom
Born date January 17, 1899
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Popular quotes

“Three old women were bending in the fields. What use is it to question us? they said. Well it shortly became clear that they knew everything there is to know about the snowy fields and the blue green shoots and the plant called "audacity", which poets mistake for violets. I began to copy out everything that was said. ... I will do anything to escape boredom. It is the task of a lifetime. You can never know enough, never work enough, never use the infinitives and participles oddly enough, never impede the movement harshly enough, never leave the mind quickly enough.”
― Anne Carson, quote from Plainwater: Essays and Poetry


“The splendor of that moment, its transcendent glory and aliveness, haunted him. He could thrust it aside by day, but it poisoned his dreams by night, calling to him and pleading with him to unlock the chains he'd bound about it.”
― David Weber, quote from Oath of Swords


“Hey beautiful,” Trey answers, sounding exhausted.

“Hey you.” My heart clenches in my chest from the sound of his voice.

He breathes heavily. “I’m sitting here, shirt off, beer in hand, TV on, and I feel so fucking empty.” The image of him lying on the couch we bought together, his beautiful body stretched out across the cushions, makes me ache in places I haven’t ached in a long time. I want him so bad. “I’m missing my girl tucked against my chest.”

“I would give anything to be there right now,” I answer honestly.

Sighing, he asks, “Remember that piece of spaghetti I threw on the ceiling the night before you left?”

“Yeah.” I smile to myself, thinking about that night. Trey insisted upon making spaghetti and meatballs for me. He came home with a grocery bag full of pasta, spaghetti sauce, and pre-made meatballs. When cooking the noodles, he told me an “old wives’ tale.” He said if you throw the noodles to the ceiling and it sticks, then the pasta is done. What he didn’t realize is if that pasta never comes down, you overcooked it.

“It fell this morning. Scared the shit out of me. I thought it was a spider trying to bury itself in my hair while I was making eggs.”

A laugh bursts out of me as I think about Trey bouncing around the apartment, spaghetti in hair thinking it was a spider. “Oh no. Miss Pasta-relli finally fell?”

“She did and that squirrely bitch knew exactly what she was doing, too. Trying to scare the crap right out of me.”

“Seems like she did.” I chuckle.

“But I got the last laugh when I turned the trash compactor on. Her little pasta self squiggled down the drain. Revenge never felt so sweet.”

Still laughing, I shake my head. “Is this what your life has come to? Fighting with old, overcooked pasta?”

“I’m telling you, Amelia, with you gone, I’ve lost my damn mind.”

“Sounds like it”
― Meghan Quinn, quote from The Other Brother


“...a God that did everything we thought was right and good wouldn't be the creator of the universe. He would be our puppet.”
― Min Jin Lee, quote from Pachinko


“Don't cry over the same thing twice. Get it all out the first time, even if it's loud and messy. Then it's over.”
― Ruth Emmie Lang, quote from Beasts of Extraordinary Circumstance


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