The Go-Between Quotes

“I was a conformist: it never occurred to me that because I suffered, there was something wrong with the system, or with the human heart.”
― L.P. Hartley, The Go-Between

“To see things as they really were—what an impoverishment!”
― L.P. Hartley, The Go-Between

“Schoolboys have a much clearer perception of one another’s characters than grown-ups have, for their characters are not obscured by a veil of good manners: they deal in hard words, they have no long-term policy, as men have, for asserting themselves, they prefer short profits and quick returns.”
― L.P. Hartley, The Go-Between

“Yes, defeat could be taken with dignity, like any other medicine. But oh, the contraction of spirit it entailed!—that was what, in prospect, I really minded. Instead of expanding in the sunshine of success, to have to shrink into oneself, make oneself into a hard tight core of disappointment, raise all one’s hackles, and defences, to keep out the cold breath of failure!”
― L.P. Hartley, The Go-Between

“Why should we call ourselves sinners? Life was life, and people acted in a certain way, which sometimes caused one pain.”
― L.P. Hartley, The Go-Between

“What causes wars, what makes them drag on so interminably, but the fear of losing face?”
― L.P. Hartley, The Go-Between

“Knowledge may be power, but it is not resilience, or resourcefulness, or adaptability to life, still less is it instinctive sympathy with human nature;”
― L.P. Hartley, The Go-Between

“With the opening of the door, and the installation of electric light in the cupboard, the skeletons had crumbled into dust.”
― L.P. Hartley, The Go-Between

“And I liked Ted Burgess in a reluctant, half-admiring, half-hating way. When I was away from him I could think of him objectively as a working farmer whom no one at the Hall thought much of. But when I was with him his mere physical presence cast a spell on me, it established an ascendancy which I could not break. He was, I felt, what a man ought to be, what I should like to be when I grew up.”
― L.P. Hartley, The Go-Between

“My father was, I suppose, a crank. He had a fine, precise mind which ignored what it was not interested in. Without being a misanthrope he was unsociable and non-conforming. He had his own unorthodox theories of education, one of which was that I should not be sent to school.”
― L.P. Hartley, The Go-Between

“When I had got over the shock of this disclosure, which quite took away my powers of speech, my first impulse was to feel aggrieved. Why hadn't they told me? I might have made an even worse fool of myself. Then, with still greater force, it struck me that I ought to have known. It had been obvious from the start, too obvious. But I was like that. Two and two never made four for me, if I could make them five.”
― L.P. Hartley, The Go-Between

“But to them, I knew, I was a go-between, they thought of me in terms of another person. When Lord Trimingham wanted Marian, when Marian wanted Ted, they turned to me. The confidences Marian had made me had been forced out of her. With Ted it was different. He felt he owed me something - me, Leo: the tribute of one nature to another.

I did not like to think of him giving up the things he cared for and sleeping on the ground. I could not believe it was softer than the beds at Brandham; besides, he might be killed. There was a lot of him to be killed, and what there was he carried about with him, it was not spread out over houses and parklands.”
― L P Hartley, The Go-Between

“And the heat was a medium which made this change of out-look possible. As a liberating power with its own laws it was outside my experience. In the heat, the commonest objects changed their nature. Walls, trees, the very ground one trod on, instead of being cool were warm to the touch: and the sense of touch is the most transfiguring of all the senses. Many things to eat and drink, which one had enjoyed because they were hot, one now shunned for the same reason. Unless restrained by ice, the butter melted. Besides altering or intensifying all smells the heat had a smell of its own - a garden smell, I called it to myself, compounded of the scents of many flowers, and odours loosened from the earth, but with something peculiar to itself which defied analysis. Sounds were fewer and seemed to come from far away, as if Nature grudged the effort. In the heat the senses, the mind, the heart, the body, all told a different tale. One felt another person, one was another person.”
― L.P. Hartley, The Go-Between

“Suddenly I caught sight of myself in a glass and saw what a figure of fun I looked. Hitherto I had always taken my appearance for granted; now I saw how inelegant it was, compared with theirs; and at the same time, for the first time, I was acutely aware of social inferiority. I felt utterly out of place among these smart rich people, and a misfit everywhere.”
― L.P. Hartley, The Go-Between