I Capture the Castle

by Dodie Smith

When I read a book, I put in all the imagination I can, so that it is almost like writing the book as well as reading it—or rather, it is like living it. It makes reading so much more exciting, but I don’t suppose many people try to do

I can still recapture that first glimpse—see the sheer grey stone walls and towers against the pale yellow sky, the reflected castle stretching towards us on the brimming moat, the floating patches of emerald-green water-weed.

gloom, our not talking naturally. Never have I felt so separate from her. And I regret to say that there were moments when my deep and loving pity for her merged into a desire to kick her fairly hard. For she is a girl who cannot walk her troubles off, or work them off; she is a girl to sit around and glare.

miserable people cannot afford to dislike each other. Cruel blows of fate call for extreme kindness in the family circle.

This desire for solitude often overcomes her at house-cleaning times.

You lose yourself in something beyond yourself and it’s a lovely rest.”

“Perhaps it’s an attempt to possess it,” I said. “Or be possessed by it; perhaps that’s the same thing, really. I suppose it’s the complete identification with beauty one’s seeking.”