I Capture the Castle

by Dodie Smith

I have found that sitting in a place where you have never sat before can be inspiring—I wrote my very best poem while sitting on the hen-house. Though even that isn’t a very good poem. I have decided my poetry is so bad that I mustn’t write any more of it.

up to now my stories have been very stiff and self-conscious. The only time father obliged me by reading one of them, he said I combined stateliness with a desperate effort to be funny.

she soon made herself take an interest in country things, and now she tries to make the country people interested in them too.

Rose says I am always crediting people with emotions I should experience myself in their situation,

Once I really looked at the sky, I wanted to go on looking; it seemed to draw me towards it and make me listen hard, though there was nothing to listen to,

“After all this time, I still don’t know if she goes on that way because she really feels like it, if she’s acting to impress us, or just acting to impress herself.” “All three,” I said. “And as it helps her to enjoy life, I don’t blame her.”

“Oh, it wouldn’t be fair to rush to church because one was miserable,” I said—taking care to look particularly cheerful. “It’d be most unfair not to—you’d be doing religion out of its very best chance.”

“In addition, I think religion has a chance of a look-in whenever the mind craves solace in music or poetry—in any form of art at all. Personally, I think it is an art, the greatest one; an extension of the communion all the other arts attempt.”

“And do religious people find out what it’s all about? Do they really get the answer to the riddle?” “They get just a whiff of an answer sometimes.”

Perhaps watching someone you love suffer can teach you even more than suffering yourself can.