Giant's Bread Quotes

“Don‘t you think a woman can be poor and happy?'
'Certainly, given the necessary qualifications.'
'Which are—what? Love and trust?'
'No, you idiotic child. A sense of humor, a tough hide and the valuable quality of being sufficient unto oneself.”
― Mary Westmacott, Giant's Bread

“Aunt Nina, Father’s sister, was quite different. She smelt nice, like the garden on a summer’s day, and she had a soft voice that Vernon liked. She had other virtues—she didn’t kiss you when you didn’t want to be kissed, and she didn’t insist on making jokes. But she didn’t come very often to Abbots Puissants.”
― Mary Westmacott, Giant's Bread

“He had heard her say to other ladies, ‘He asks me the quaintest questions. Just listen to this. Aren’t children funny and adorable?’ But Vernon couldn’t see that he was funny or adorable at all. He just wanted to know. You’d got to know. That was part of growing up.”
― Mary Westmacott, Giant's Bread

“A new nursemaid came, a thin white girl with protruding eyes. Her name was Isabel, but she was called Susan as being ‘more suitable’. This puzzled Vernon very much. He asked Nurse for an explanation. ‘There are names that are suitable to the gentry, Master Vernon, and names that are suitable for servants. That’s all there is to it.”
― Mary Westmacott, Giant's Bread

“There was a sudden interruption. His mother stood in the doorway. Her eyes were swollen with crying. She dabbed them with a handkerchief. She stood there theatrically miserable. ‘He’s gone,’ she cried. ‘Without a word to me. Without a word. Oh, my little son. My little son.”
― Mary Westmacott, Giant's Bread

“Little boys going on asking foolish questions,’ said Nurse, with the deftness of a long professional career behind her.”
― Mary Westmacott, Giant's Bread

“Winnie, Vernon knew, was going away because of Father. He accepted that fact without any particular interest or curiosity. Nursemaids did sometimes go away because of Father.”
― Mary Westmacott, Giant's Bread

“Against that background Vernon saw his mother—saw her for the first time—a magnificent woman with white skin and red gold hair—a being like the pictures in his fairy book, saw her suddenly as something wonderful and beautiful. He was never to forget that strange moment. She was his mother and she was beautiful and he loved her. Something hurt him inside, like a pain—only it wasn’t a pain. And there was a queer booming noise inside his head—a thundering noise that ended up high and sweet like a bird’s note. Altogether a very wonderful moment.”
― Mary Westmacott, Giant's Bread

“Looking across the room one day, just after a scene like the above, he saw his father standing by the nursery door with sardonic eyes, watching him. Their eyes met. Something seemed to pass between them—comprehension—a sense of kinship.”
― Mary Westmacott, Giant's Bread

“Vernon was, perhaps, a lonely little boy, but he never knew it. Because, you see, he had Mr Green and Poodle, Squirrel and Tree to play with.”
― Mary Westmacott, Giant's Bread

“A faint smile showed on his face. ‘The Giant! You and Groen have your little joke all to yourselves, I fancy. Everyone takes it for granted the Giant is the Moloch of Machinery—They don’t see that the real Giant is that pigmy figure—man. The individualist who endures through Stone and Iron and who though civilizations crumble and die, fights his way through yet another Glacial Age to rise in a new civilization of which we do not dream . . .’ His smile broadened. ‘As I grow older I am more and more convinced that there is nothing so pathetic, so ridiculous, so absurd, and so absolutely wonderful as Man—”
― Mary Westmacott, Giant's Bread

“I am an old man. There are things in which I take pleasure—there are other things—such as the music of today—which do not give me pleasure. But all the same I know Genius when I meet it. There are a hundred charlatans—a hundred breakers down of tradition who think that by doing so they have accomplished something wonderful. And there is the hundred and first—a creator, a man who steps boldly into the future—’ He paused, then went on. ‘Yes, I know genius when I meet it. I may not like it—but I recognize it. Groen, whoever he is, has genius . . . The music of tomorrow . . .”
― Mary Westmacott, Giant's Bread

“The glare increased—to the whiteness of magnesium.”
― Mary Westmacott, Giant's Bread

“And on the top immense pinnacle a little figure—facing away from the audience towards the insufferable glare that represented the rising of the sun”
― Mary Westmacott, Giant's Bread

“There was an Episode of Skyscrapers—New York seen upside down as from a circling aeroplane in the early dawn of morning. And the strange inharmonious rhythm beat ever more insistently—with increasing menacing monotony.”
― Mary Westmacott, Giant's Bread

“The prologue had represented Stone—Man’s infancy.”
― Mary Westmacott, Giant's Bread

“There was a wait, filled with chattering and laughter—then the lights wavered and sank.”
― Mary Westmacott, Giant's Bread

“The will of God! Would you be able to say that if God’s will didn’t happen to coincide with Nell Chetwynd’s comfort, I wonder? You don’t know anything about God or you couldn’t have spoken like that, gently patting God on the back for making life comfortable and easy for you. Do you know a text that used to frighten me in the Bible? This night shall thy soul be required of thee. When God requires your soul of you, be sure you’ve got a soul to give Him!”
― Mary Westmacott, Giant's Bread

“Her face was flushed and exalted. Sebastian perceived that the war had, as he phrased it, 'got' Joe. The war did get people. He had discussed it and deplored it with Jane. It made him sick to read the things that were printed and said about the war. 'A world fit for heroes', 'The war to end war', 'The fight for democracy.' And really all the time, it was the same old bloody business it always had been. Why couldn't people speak the truth about it?”
― Mary Westmacott, Giant's Bread

“I can talk to you better than anyone I know, Jane. I don't quite know why, either.'

'Well, in a way, we're both the same kind of person, aren't we?'

'Are we?'

'I think so. Not superficially, perhaps, but fundamentally. We both like truth. I think, as far as one can say that of oneself we both see things as they are.'

'And you think most people don't?'

'Of course they don't. Nell Vereker, for instance. She sees things as they've been shown her, as she hopes they are.”
― Mary Westmacott, Giant's Bread

“Vernon calls this the 'usual sort of thing', but, as a matter of fact, it isn't. It's entirely unusual. The whole orchestration is conducted on an unusual plan. What it is, though, is immature. Brilliant but immature.”
― Mary Westmacott, Giant's Bread

“The perfect husband! Perhaps that was because he was an American. You always heard that Americans made perfect husbands.”
― Mary Westmacott, Giant's Bread

“As I grow older I am more and more convinced that there is nothing so pathetic, so ridiculous, so absurd, and so absolutely wonderful as Man”
― Mary Westmacott, Giant's Bread