I Capture the Castle

by Dodie Smith

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.

Unfortunately, the more my mind’s eye sees green and gold, the more drained of all colour does the twilight seem.

I don’t think I should ever be a daisy.

I would approach matrimony as cheerfully as I would the tomb and I cannot feel that I should give satisfaction.

Noble deeds and hot baths are the best cures for depression.

The last stage of a bath, when the water is cooling and there is nothing to look forward to, can be pretty disillusioning. I expect alcohol works much the same way.

time takes the ugliness and horror out of death and turns it into beauty.

“Ah, but you’re the insidious type—Jane Eyre with a touch of Becky Sharp. A thoroughly dangerous girl.

smell of flowers and beeswax, sweet yet faintly sour and musty; a smell that makes you feel very tender towards the past.

heard myself explaining to God as I always do about good, kind, useful lies.

anticipation—but she wasn’t forthcoming. And I quite understood; when things mean a very great deal to you, exciting anticipation just isn’t safe.

Perhaps if I make myself write I shall find out what is wrong with me.

I ought to be ashamed—being glad the riches won’t be on my conscience, while only too willing to have them on my back.

The peace was so great that it seemed like a soft, thick substance wrapped closely round me making it hard to move;

It was like being drowned in the ghost of water.

I have grown more and more ravenous as I have grown more and more miserable.

“I am a restlessness inside a stillness inside a restlessness.”

Sometimes the abyss yawns very attractively.