The Balkan Trilogy Quotes

“They have,’ she said, ‘the uniformity of their insecurity.”
― Olivia Manning, Fortunes of War: The Balkan Trilogy

“He had only to arrive to take a step away from her.”
― Olivia Manning, Fortunes of War: The Balkan Trilogy

“an age of chivalry as outmoded as honour, as obsolete as truth.”
― Olivia Manning, Fortunes of War: The Balkan Trilogy

“There was no violence; there were no demonstrations; simply, the everyday world was running down.”
― Olivia Manning, Fortunes of War: The Balkan Trilogy

“War meant a perpetual postponement of life, yet one did not cease to grow old. She had been twenty-one when it started. At the end, if there ever was an end, what age would she be? How could she blame Guy for dissipating his energies when all the energies of life were being dissipated? What else could he do? War was a time when mediocrities came to the top and better men must rot or die in the attempt.”
― Olivia Manning, The Balkan Trilogy

“In Bucharest, they had had employment and a home. They had had Sasha. Guy might find employment here, they might even find a home, but Sasha, she feared, was lost forever. Even his memory was disappearing into the past. For the last week or so, she had not given him a thought, though there always remained, like a shadow on her mind, the hollow darkness into which he had disappeared. He was dead, she supposed, like her loved red kitten that had fallen from the balcony of the flat. If one could not bear the memory of the dead, then they must be shut out of memory. There was no other action anyone could take against the bafflement of grief.”
― Olivia Manning, The Balkan Trilogy

“She said, "David is more realistic, and probably more rigid."
"And Guy?"
"I don't know." It was true, she did not know. She had discovered, but could not elucidate, the resolute impracticability of Guy's way of life. She said, "I told him once that when I married him, I thought I was marrying the rock of ages. I pretty soon found he was capable of absolute lunacy. For instance, he once thought of marrying Sophy just to give her a British passport.”
― Olivia Manning, The Balkan Trilogy

“pellagra,”
― Olivia Manning, Fortunes of War: The Balkan Trilogy

“War meant a perpetual postponement of life, yet one did not cease to grow old.”
― Olivia Manning, The Balkan Trilogy

“Inchcape, bending towards her, said: ‘You are Helen of Troy. We ask only that you should be beautiful. Yours is the face that launched a thousand ships.”
― Olivia Manning, Fortunes of War: The Balkan Trilogy

“If Guy had for her the virtue of permanence, she might have the same virtue for him. To have one thing permanent in life as they knew it was as much as they could expect.”
― Olivia Manning, Fortunes of War: The Balkan Trilogy

“Jews are always strangers,’ Harriet thought,”
― Olivia Manning, Fortunes of War: The Balkan Trilogy

“She was beginning to fear she had married a man whom she could not take seriously.”
― Olivia Manning, Fortunes of War: The Balkan Trilogy

“Their sense of likeness astonished them. It resembled magic. They felt themselves held in a spellbound condition which they feared to injure. Although she could not pin down any overt point of resemblance, Harriet at times imagined he was the person most like her in the world, her mirror image.”
― Olivia Manning, Fortunes of War: The Balkan Trilogy

“People will say anything to appear interesting.”
― Olivia Manning, Fortunes of War: The Balkan Trilogy

“But you must sacrifice your individuality,’ Guy told her. ‘It’s nothing but egoism. You must unite with other right-thinking, self-abnegating people – then you can achieve anything.’ The idea filled her with gloom.”
― Olivia Manning, Fortunes of War: The Balkan Trilogy

“She married for adventure.”
― Olivia Manning, Fortunes of War: The Balkan Trilogy

“We have nothing to do but listen,’ said Harriet, and she suddenly realized how happy she was here with Guy, come out of his seclusion to be a companion of this freedom that, having neither past nor future, was a lacuna in time; a gift of leisure that need only be accepted and enjoyed.”
― Olivia Manning, Fortunes of War: The Balkan Trilogy

“He expressed by his action his indifference to money but he was not, Harriet now knew, indifferent to the lack of it.”
― Olivia Manning, Fortunes of War: The Balkan Trilogy

“If one could not bear the memory of the dead, then they must be shut out of memory. There was no other action anyone could take against the bafflement of grief.”
― Olivia Manning, Fortunes of War: The Balkan Trilogy

“Those who give too much are always expected to give more, and blamed when they reach the point of refusal.”
― Olivia Manning, Fortunes of War: The Balkan Trilogy

“She does not attach much importance to passing events.’ Harriet laughed. ‘You have only to let them pass and they lose their importance.”
― Olivia Manning, Fortunes of War: The Balkan Trilogy

“He loves to tell that old story of the don who was granted an interview with Napoleon. “No doubt a remarkable fellow,” said the don afterwards, “but anyone can see he’s not a Cambridge man.”
― Olivia Manning, Fortunes of War: The Balkan Trilogy

“Reflecting on the process of involvement and disenchantment which was marriage, she thought that one entered it unsuspecting and, unsuspecting, found one was trapped in it.”
― Olivia Manning, Fortunes of War: The Balkan Trilogy

“Truth is a luxury. We can only afford it now and then.”
― Olivia Manning, Fortunes of War: The Balkan Trilogy

“But I don’t imagine I exist to enhance your sense of superiority.”
― Olivia Manning, Fortunes of War: The Balkan Trilogy

“Out in the street again, Harriet attempted philosophy: ‘Wherever one is,’ she said, ‘the only thing certain is that nothing is certain.”
― Olivia Manning, Fortunes of War: The Balkan Trilogy

“They left the park by a side gate where a statue of a disgraced politician stood with its head hidden in a linen bag.”
― Olivia Manning, Fortunes of War: The Balkan Trilogy

“Oh, come, darling,’ Guy protested, ‘I didn’t want to marry Sophie, but one has to be polite.”
― Olivia Manning, Fortunes of War: The Balkan Trilogy

“The trouble with prejudice is, there’s usually a reason for it,’ but she now knew better than to say this to Guy.”
― Olivia Manning, Fortunes of War: The Balkan Trilogy