“God, thought Ross, it does work, and unfairly; but I want her, not any other, not the most beautiful eighteen-year-old damsel born out of a sea-shell, not the most seductive houri of any sultan's harem; I want her with her familiar gestures and her shining smile and her scarred knees, and I know she wants me in just the same way, and if there's any happiness more complete than this I don't know it and am not sure I even want it.”
― Winston Graham, quote from The Black Moon
“Blemishes on the beauty of a person one loves are like grace notes adding something to a piece of music.”
― Winston Graham, quote from The Black Moon
“You see, Ross, in every right marriage, in every good marriage a woman has to be three things, don't she? She's got to be a wife and look after a man's comforts in the way a man should be looked after. Then she's got to bear his children and get all swelled up like a summer pumpkin and then often-times feed them after and smell of babies and have them crawling all about her...But then, third, she has also to try and be his mistress at the same time; someone he is still interested in; someone he wants, not just the person who happens to be there and convenient; someone a bit mysterious...someone whose knee or -- or shoulder he wouldn't instantly recognize if he saw it beside him in bed. It's -- it's impossible.”
― Winston Graham, quote from The Black Moon
“Music, she thought, perhaps could be a continuing process, like life, a shedding of one skin as fast as another grew. Instead every tune seemed to exist with its notes firmly rooted in an event or an emotion or a period of time.”
― Winston Graham, quote from The Black Moon
“The French have a saying – is it the French? I don’t know, I believe so – there is a saying that you do not put a boiling kettle upon the fire. You put cold water in the kettle and allow it to warm. So with marriage.”
― Winston Graham, quote from The Black Moon
“we can’t alter the world, we can only adapt ourselves to it.”
― Winston Graham, quote from The Black Moon
“On the Monday morning, with the rain still pouring down, Ross went in to see Drake, who was sitting up in bed and, apart from the bandaged shoulder and the plastered fingers, was now looking more substantial than Dwight. Perhaps this too was not surprising. At nineteen, if a man does not die from a wound, he quickly gets better. ‘So,’ said Ross. ‘I thought I might have had to take your sister home some bad news.’ Drake smiled. All the damned family, Ross thought, had this wonderful smile. They had certainly not inherited it from their father. ‘No, sur. I”
― Winston Graham, quote from The Black Moon
“If we lived for ever, who would look forward eagerly to tomorrow? If there were no darkness, should we so appreciate the sun? Warmth after cold, food after hunger, drink after thirst, sexual love after the absence of sexual love, the fatherly greeting after being away, the comfort and dryness of home after a ride in the rain, the warmth and peace and security of one’s fireside after being among enemies. Unless there were contrast there might be satiety. He”
― Winston Graham, quote from The Black Moon
“To hear the young talk today you would think no one had had any excitement in the past, any heartaches, any problems, any bitter frustrations or heady fulfilment. The young of today were more than a shade tedious; pompous, self-centred, so sure that their concerns were the first important ones that had ever happened. They had no perspective. no sense of proportion. Perhaps it was necessary to be old to acquire a true sense of proportion. It was small consolation but it was something. On”
― Winston Graham, quote from The Black Moon
“find features, author interviews and news”
― Winston Graham, quote from The Black Moon
“I think, sir,’ said Demelza, ‘that your apricot tart is about to be laced viz cream and rum, and you would do well to discover wezzer you can attempt zat.”
― Winston Graham, quote from The Black Moon
“With age one never looked far ahead. The marathon horizons of youth narrowed and shortened into hurdles of age.”
― Winston Graham, quote from The Black Moon
“It is a mistake to restrict oneself in one’s pleasures,’ Ross said. ‘One should never risk being thought a Puritan.”
― Winston Graham, quote from The Black Moon
“Perhaps it is like a fever that blows in the air, like cholera, like the plague; it blows in the air and settles on men – or a town – or a nation – and everyone in it, or nearly everyone, falls a victim.’ He”
― Winston Graham, quote from The Black Moon
“These days I often have a struggle not to feel inferior to you, that is in your judgment of human beings.’ ‘I don’t think I have any judgment, at least not to be proud of. But perhaps I am nearer the earth than you. Like Garrick, I can smell a friend.”
― Winston Graham, quote from The Black Moon
“...I mistrust folk who are always bringing God or Christ into their conversations. If it is not an actual blasphemy it is at least a presumption. It smacks of self-conceit, doesn't it?”
― Winston Graham, quote from The Black Moon
“In order to destroy this system which we so much detest we are creating conditions over here which run contrary to our dearest p-principles.”
― Winston Graham, quote from The Black Moon
“Yet, although he could not quite work this out in simple terms in his own mind, the very savour of life, he thought, was itself enhanced if it were not totally taken for granted. Perhaps it was something to do with the whole philosophy of the world into which we were born. If we lived for ever, who would look forward eagerly to tomorrow? If there were no darkness, should we appreciate the sun? Warmth after cold, food after hunger, drink after thirst, sexual love after the absence of sexual love, the fatherly greeting after being away, the comfort and dryness of home after a ride in the rain, the warmth and peace and security of one’s fireside after being among enemies. Unless there was contrast there might be satiety.”
― Winston Graham, quote from The Black Moon
“was now working at near its”
― Winston Graham, quote from The Black Moon
Winston Graham
Born place: in Manchester, The United Kingdom
Born date June 30, 1908
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“I can't be friends with a man who blows hot and cold with the same breath.”
― Aesop, quote from Aesop's Fables
“I called to the waiter, ‘bring me one of those Antares things.’ Sitting here in a bar with an asexual cyborg who is probably the only other normal person on the whole goddamned planet.”
― Joe Haldeman, quote from The Forever War
“crossroads about the same time tomorrow. Ashton spent a few moments chattering about her excuse for being away from Mont Royal; it also involved staying with a friend, a nonexistent one. Madeline heard Ashton’s voice, but few of the words registered. The three women crowded into the chaise, Ashton in the middle. It was evident to Madeline that Orry’s sister didn’t like squeezing against a Negress, but she’d just have to put up with it.”
― John Jakes, quote from North and South
“Loving people, and allowing yourself to be loved, was only worth the risk if the odds were in your favor, but they quite clearly weren't. There were about seventy-nine squillion people in the world, and if you were very lucky, you would end up being loved by fifteen or twenty of them. So how smart did you have to be to work out that it just wasn't worth the risk?”
― Nick Hornby, quote from About a Boy
“I think the iPod is the true face of Republican politics, and I’m in favor of the music industry … standing up proud and saying it out loud: We in the Chiclet-manufacturing business are not about social justice, …we’re not about a coherent set of national ideals, we’re not about wisdom. We’re about choosing what WE want to listen to and ignoring everything else…. We’re about giving ourselves a mindless feel-good treat every five minutes. …We’re about persuading ten-year-old children to spend twenty-five dollars on a cool little silicone iPod case that costs a licensed Apple Computer subsidiary thirty-nine cents to manufacture.”
― Jonathan Franzen, quote from Freedom
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Her Mad HatterBookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.
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