“English is the language of a people ho have probably earned their reputation for perfidy and hypocrisy because their language itself is so flexible, so often light-headed with with statements which appear to mean one thing one year and quite a different thing the next.”
― Paul Scott, quote from The Jewel in the Crown
“Rumours began with the whispered gossip of native servants and spread quickly to the rest of the population.”
― Paul Scott, quote from The Jewel in the Crown
“Well, life is not just a business of standing on dry land and occasionally getting your feet wet. It is merely an illusion that some of us stand on one bank and some on the opposite. So long as we stand like that we are not living at all, but dreaming. So jump, jump in, and let the shock wake us up. Even if we drown, at least for a moment or two before we die we shall be awake and alive.”
― Paul Scott, quote from The Jewel in the Crown
“Deny people something they want, over a longish period, and they naturally start disagreeing about precisely what it is they do want.”
― Paul Scott, quote from The Jewel in the Crown
“One always saw and sees through pretense.”
― Paul Scott, quote from The Jewel in the Crown
“You seem to like everybody. It’s unnatural. It’s also unfortunate. You’re going to waste so much time before you’ve worked out who the people are it’s worth your while to know.”
― Paul Scott, quote from The Jewel in the Crown
“In such a fashion human beings call for explanations of the things that happen to them and in such a way scenes and characters are set for exploration, like toys set out by kneeling children intent on pursuing their grim but necessary games.”
― Paul Scott, quote from The Jewel in the Crown
“There are images that stay vividly in your mind, even after many years: images coupled with the feeling that at the same time came to you. Sometimes you can know that such an image has been selected to stay with you forever out of the hundreds you every day encounter.”
― Paul Scott, quote from The Jewel in the Crown
“in this life, living, there is no dignity except perhaps in laughter.”
― Paul Scott, quote from The Jewel in the Crown
“the unexpected side of a man’s personality is more memorable than the proof he may appear to give from time to time that he is unchanged, unchangeable.”
― Paul Scott, quote from The Jewel in the Crown
“I had that sensation which sometimes comes to us all, of returning to a situation that had already been resolved on some previous occasion, of being again committed to a tragic course of action, having learned nothing from that other time or those other times”
― Paul Scott, quote from The Jewel in the Crown
“she had this look of calmness, of concentration, the look, I think, of all women who for the first time are with child and find that the world around them has become relatively unimportant.”
― Paul Scott, quote from The Jewel in the Crown
“When you spoke to her there wasn’t any mystery. In herself she was all the explanation I felt she needed. And that is rare, isn’t it? To be explained by yourself, by what you are and what you do, and not by what you’ve done, or were, or by what people think you might be or might become.”
― Paul Scott, quote from The Jewel in the Crown
“That MacGregor and Bibighar are the place of the white and the place of the black? To get from one to the other you could not cross by a bridge but had to your courage in your hands and enter the flood and let yourself be taken with it, lead where it may.”
― Paul Scott, quote from The Jewel in the Crown
“There’s a difference between trying to stop an injustice and obstructing justice.”
― Paul Scott, quote from The Jewel in the Crown
“How can people be punished when they are innocent?”
― Paul Scott, quote from The Jewel in the Crown
“Kumar was a man who felt in the end he had lost everything, even his Englishness, and could then only meet every situation—even the most painful—in silence, in the hope that out of it he would dredge back up some self-respect.”
― Paul Scott, quote from The Jewel in the Crown
“She had devoted her life, in a practical and unimportant way, trying to prove that fear was evil because it promoted prejudice, that courage was good because it was a sign of selflessness, that ignorance was bad because fear sprang from it, that knowledge was good because the more you knew of the world’s complexity the more clearly you saw the insignificance of the part you played.”
― Paul Scott, quote from The Jewel in the Crown
“love, as their parents knew, was not enough. Hunger and poverty could never be reduced by love alone.”
― Paul Scott, quote from The Jewel in the Crown
“I am an old man. I am entitled, am I not, to say what I think?—and of course to stray from the point.”
― Paul Scott, quote from The Jewel in the Crown
“the exercise of authority was not an easy business, especially if those who exercised it no longer felt they had heaven on their side. That”
― Paul Scott, quote from The Jewel in the Crown
“She had to make her own marvelous mistakes.”
― Paul Scott, quote from The Jewel in the Crown
“There’s nothing like a good downpour to cool people off.”
― Paul Scott, quote from The Jewel in the Crown
“she felt there was between them an unexpected mutual confidence, confidence of the kind that could spring up between two strangers who found themselves thrown together quite fortuitously in difficult circumstances that might turn out to be either frightening or amusing. And”
― Paul Scott, quote from The Jewel in the Crown
“there being somewhere in this curious centuries-long association a kind of love with hate on the obverse side, as in a coin.”
― Paul Scott, quote from The Jewel in the Crown
“riot squads were ready to go into action. Although these young English boys (many of them civilians themselves little more than a year ago, and with only a very sketchy idea of the problems of administering Imperial”
― Paul Scott, quote from The Jewel in the Crown
“For years, since the eighteenth century, and in each century since, we have said at home, in England, in Whitehall, that the day would come when our rule in India will end, not bloodily, but in peace, in—so we made it seem—a perfect gesture of equality and friendship and love. For years, for nearly a century, the books that Indians have read have been the books of our English radicals, our English liberals. There has been, you see, a seed. A seed planted in the Indian imagination and in the English imagination. Out of it was to come something sane and grave, full of dignity, full of thoughtfulness and kindness and peace and wisdom. For all these qualities are in us, in you, and in me, in old Joseph and Mr. Narayan and Mr. White and I suppose in Brigadier Reid. And they were there too, in Mr. Chaudhuri. For years we have been promising and for years finding means of putting the fulfilment of the promise off until the promise stopped looking like a promise and started looking only like a sinister prevarication, even to me, let alone to Indians who think and feel and know the same as me. And the tragedy is that between us there is this little matter of the colour of the skin, which gets in the way of our seeing through each other’s failings and seeing into each other’s hearts. Because if we saw through them, into them, then we should know. And what we should know is that the promise is a promise and will be fulfilled.” But”
― Paul Scott, quote from The Jewel in the Crown
“If God is never happy what chance of happiness is there for us?”
― Paul Scott, quote from The Jewel in the Crown
“Is not our capacity to laugh and cry the measure of our humanity?”
― Paul Scott, quote from The Jewel in the Crown
“Are we not all creatures of chance?”
― Paul Scott, quote from The Jewel in the Crown
Paul Scott
Born place: in Southgate, London, The United Kingdom
Born date March 25, 1920
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“Rosie,
I'm returning to Boston tomorrow but before I go I wanted to write this letter to you. All the thoughts and feelings that have been bubbling up inside me are finally overflowing from this pen and I'm leaving this letter for you so that you don't feel that I'm putting you under any great pressure. I understand that you will need to take your time trying to decide on what I am about to say.
I no what's going on, Rosie. You're my best friend and I can see the sadness in your eyes. I no that Greg isn't away working for the weekend. You never could lie to me; you were always terrible at it. Your eyes betray you time and time again. Don't pretend that everything is perfect because I see it isn't. I see that Greg is a selfish man who has absolutely no idea just how lucky he is and it makes me sick.
He is the luckiest man in the world to have you, Rosie, but he doesn't deserve you and you deserve far better. You deserve someone who loves you with every single beat of his heart, someone who thinks about you constantly, someone who spends every minute of every day just wondering what you're doing, where you are, who you're with and if you're OK. You need someone who can help you reach your dreams and who can protect you from your fears. You need someone who will treat you with respect, love every part of you, especially your flaws. You should be with someone who can make you happy, really happy, dancing-on-air happy. Someone who should have taken the chance to be with you years ago instead of becoming scared and being too afraid to try.
I am not scared any more, Rosie. I am not afraid to try. I no what the feeling was at your wedding - it was jealousy. My heart broke when I saw the woman I love turning away from me to walk down the aisle with another man, a man she planned to spend the rest of her life with. It was like a prison sentence for me - years stretching ahead without me being able to tell you how I feel or hold you how I wanted to.
Twice we've stood beside each other at the altar, Rosie. Twice. And twice we got it wrong. I needed you to be there for my wedding day but I was too stupid to see that I needed you to be the reason for my wedding day.
I should never have let your lips leave mine all those years ago in Boston. I should never have pulled away. I should never have panicked. I should never have wasted all those years without you. Give me a chance to make them up to you. I love you, Rosie, and I want to be with you and Katie and Josh. Always.
Please think about it. Don't waste your time on Greg. This is our opportunity. Let's stop being afraid and take the chance. I promise I'll make you happy.
All my love,
Alex”
― Cecelia Ahern, quote from Love, Rosie
“When you know something’s wrong, but you don’t know exactly what it is, the air around you changes.”
― Sarah Addison Allen, quote from Garden Spells
“That doesn't sound very attractive," laughed Anne. "I like people to have a little nonsense about them.”
― L.M. Montgomery, quote from Anne of the Island
“I’m not leaving,” Sam said, his eyes fixed on the boy he was holding. “Not until Disney Princess here apologizes, or his head comes off, one of the two.”
― Rachel Caine, quote from The Dead Girls' Dance
“From this distance everything is so bloody perfect.”
― Melina Marchetta, quote from On the Jellicoe Road
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