Elspeth Huxley · 281 pages
Rating: (4.6K votes)
“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, quote from The Flame Trees of Thika: Memories of an African Childhood
“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, quote from The Flame Trees of Thika: Memories of an African Childhood
“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, quote from The Flame Trees of Thika: Memories of an African Childhood
“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, quote from The Flame Trees of Thika: Memories of an African Childhood
“...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, quote from The Flame Trees of Thika: Memories of an African Childhood
“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, quote from The Flame Trees of Thika: Memories of an African Childhood
“...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, quote from The Flame Trees of Thika: Memories of an African Childhood
Elspeth Huxley
Born place: in London, The United Kingdom
Born date July 23, 1907
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“»Roma se tapa los oídos cuando te oye; y el mundo se ríe de ti.”
― Henryk Sienkiewicz, quote from Quo Vadis
“The Man went to sleep in front of the fire ever so happy; but the Woman sat up, combing her hair. She took the bone of the shoulder of mutton – the big fat blade bone – and she looked at the wonderful marks on it, and she threw more wood on the fire, and she made a Magic. She made the first Singing Magic in the world.”
― Rudyard Kipling, quote from Just So Stories
“Is it that they think it a duty to be continually talking,' pursued she: 'and so never pause to think, but fill up with aimless trifles and vain repetitions when subjects of real interest fail to present themselves? - or do they really take a pleasure in such discourse?'
'Very likely they do,' said I; 'their shallow minds can hold no great ideas, and their light heads are carried away by trivialities that would not move a better-furnished skull; - and their only alternative to such discourse is to plunge over head and ears into the slough of scandal - which is their chief delight.”
― Anne Brontë, quote from The Tenant of Wildfell Hall
“I'm fine right here."
All patience, he bent down until his face was close to hers. "What you are is hoping to get drunk enough so that you can take a few punches at someone without worrying about the consequences. With me, you don't have to get drunk, you don't have to worry. You can take all the punches you want."
"Why?"
"Because you have something sad in your eyes and it gets to me.”
― J.D. Robb, quote from Naked in Death
“Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn about anyone else”
― L.J. Smith, quote from The Fury / Dark Reunion
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