The Corfu Trilogy Quotes

“In those days, living as we did in the country, without the dubious benefits of radio or television, we had to rely on such primitive forms of amusement as books, quarrelling, parties, and the laughter of our friends,”
― Gerald Durrell, The Corfu Trilogy

“I liked being half-educated; you were so much more surprised at everything when you were ignorant.”
― Gerald Durrell, The Corfu Trilogy

“She lifted her hand again and waved. It seemed to me, in the gloom, that the flowers had moved closer to her, had crowded eagerly about her bed, as though waiting for her to tell them something. A ravaged old queen, lying in state, surrounded by her whispering court of flowers.”
― Gerald Durrell, The Corfu Trilogy

“Here in Corfu,’ said Theodore, his eyes twinkling with pride, ‘anything can happen.”
― Gerald Durrell, The Corfu Trilogy

“I’m making some scones,’ said Mother, and sighs of satisfaction ran round the table, for Mother’s scones, wearing cloaks of home-made strawberry jam, butter, and cream, were a delicacy all of us adored.”
― Gerald Durrell, The Corfu Trilogy

“That August, when we arrived, the island lay breathless and sun-drugged in a smouldering, peacock-blue sea under a sky that had been faded to a pale powder-blue by the fierce rays of the sun.”
― Gerald Durrell, The Corfu Trilogy

“No one but a murderer would have thought of giving Gerry that albatross.”
― Gerald Durrell, The Corfu Trilogy

“Gradually the magic of the island settled over us as gently and clingingly as pollen. Each day had a tranquillity, a timelessness, about it, so that you wished it would never end. But then the dark skin of night would peel off and there would be a fresh day waiting for us, glossy and colourful as a child’s transfer and with the same tinge of unreality.”
― Gerald Durrell, The Corfu Trilogy

“It was due to this attitude of pomposity that he set the villa on fire. Leslie”
― Gerald Durrell, The Corfu Trilogy

“Theodore had an apparently inexhaustible fund of knowledge about everything, but he imparted this knowledge with a sort of meticulous diffidence that made you feel he was not so much teaching you something new as reminding you of something which you were already aware of, but which had, for some reason or other, slipped your mind.”
― Gerald Durrell, The Corfu Trilogy

“leaves into gay, swirling little dances that died as suddenly as they began. Playfully it ruffled the feathers on the sparrows’ backs, so that they shuddered and fluffed themselves; and it leaped without warning at the gulls, so that they were stopped in mid-air and had to curve their white wings against it. Shutters started to bang and doors chattered suddenly in their frames. But still the sun shone, the sea remained placid, and the mountains sat complacently, summer-bronzed, wearing their splintered snow hats.”
― Gerald Durrell, The Corfu Trilogy

“In a few days small white clouds started their winter parade, trooping across the sky, soft and chubby, long, languorous, and unkempt, or small and crisp as feathers, and driving them before it, like an ill-assorted flock of sheep, would come the wind. This was warm at first, and came in gentle gusts, rubbing through the olive groves so that the leaves trembled and turned silver with excitement, rocking the cypresses so that they undulated gently, and stirring the dead”
― Gerald Durrell, The Corfu Trilogy

“Interspersed with the clams were the serpulas, beautiful feathery petals, forever moving round and round, perched on the end of a long, thick, greyish tube. The moving petals, orange-gold and blue, looked curiously out of place on the end of these stubby stalks, like an orchid on a mushroom stem.”
― Gerald Durrell, The Corfu Trilogy

“Eventually the warm wind and the rain of winter seemed to polish the sky, so that when January arrived it shone a clear, tender blue … the same blue as that of the tiny flames that devoured the olive logs in the charcoal pits. The nights were still and cool, with a moon so fragile it barely freckled the sea with silver points. The dawns were pale and translucent until the sun rose, mist-wrapped, like a gigantic silkworm cocoon, and washed the island with a delicate bloom of gold dust.”
― Gerald Durrell, The Corfu Trilogy

“Lena, glowing like a tiger-lily, swept to the piano,”
― Gerald Durrell, The Corfu Trilogy

“escaped to the veranda, where he stood in the moonlight taking deep breaths.”
― Gerald Durrell, The Corfu Trilogy

“The noise of drinking was exhilarating. Champagne corks popped and the pale, chrysanthemum-coloured liquid, whispering gleefully with bubbles, hissed into the glasses; heavy red wine glupped into the goblets, thick and crimson as the blood of some mythical monster, and a swirling wreath of pink bubbles formed on the surface; the frosty white wine tiptoed into the glasses, shrilling, gleaming, now like diamonds, now like topaz; the ouzo lay transparent and innocent as the edge of a mountain pool until the water splashed in and the whole glass curdled like a conjuring trick, coiling and blurring into a summer cloud of moonstone white. Presently”
― Gerald Durrell, The Corfu Trilogy

“The sliding doors between the dining-room and drawing-room had been pulled back and the vast room thus formed was a riot of flowers, balloons and paintings, the long tables with their frost-white cloths sparkling with silver, the side tables groaning under the weight of the cold dishes.”
― Gerald Durrell, The Corfu Trilogy

“lavender-coloured lightning.”
― Gerald Durrell, The Corfu Trilogy

“These summer storms would be hatched in a nest of cumulus clouds in the Albanian mountains and ferried rapidly across to Corfu by a warm, scouring wind”
― Gerald Durrell, The Corfu Trilogy

“yellow as a primrose, some great fat white doves”
― Gerald Durrell, The Corfu Trilogy

“I don’t want him drooling all over the place like a sex-starved spaniel.”
― Gerald Durrell, The Corfu Trilogy

“Dierdre was one of a pair of enormous common toads that I had found, tamed with comparative ease, and established in the tiny walled garden below the veranda. Here they lived a blameless life among the geraniums and tangerine trees, venturing up onto the veranda when the lights were lit to take their share of the insect life.”
― Gerald Durrell, The Corfu Trilogy

“where the streets were two-donkeys narrow and the air always redolent of freshly baked bread, fruit, sunshine and drains in equal quantities,”
― Gerald Durrell, The Corfu Trilogy

“Mother, scarlet with heat, trotted frantically around the kitchen making scones, cakes, apple turnovers, and brandysnaps, stews, pies, jellies, and trifles.”
― Gerald Durrell, The Corfu Trilogy

“Ensconced in the attic, she was producing somewhat lopsided and slippery pieces of sculpture out of an acrid-smelling yellow soap and appearing in a flowered smock and an artistic trance at mealtimes.”
― Gerald Durrell, The Corfu Trilogy

“Eventually, having shoved enough down them to keep them more or less alive, I left them in their strawberry basket on the veranda”
― Gerald Durrell, The Corfu Trilogy

“dropped in on my old shepherd friend Yani who provided us with some bread and fig cake and a straw hat full of wild strawberries to sustain us.”
― Gerald Durrell, The Corfu Trilogy

“Well, I want you all to be polite,’ said Mother firmly, adding, ‘and you’re not to mention owls, Larry. She might think we’re peculiar.’ ‘We are,’ concluded Larry with feeling.”
― Gerald Durrell, The Corfu Trilogy

“Are we having a plague of owls?’ Larry inquired. ‘Are they attacking the larder and zooming out with bunches of chops in their talons?”
― Gerald Durrell, The Corfu Trilogy