Nightingale Wood Quotes

“Happiness can never hope to command so much interest as distress.”
― Stella Gibbons, Nightingale Wood

“This may not be much, but it is something. Tomorrow we die; but at least we danced in silver shoes.”
― Stella Gibbons, Nightingale Wood

“While she lay there with these old worn thoughts coming obediently into her mind, called there by habit and the familiar quiet of early morning, she was aware that at the back of her mind there was another thought that was not at all stale, but so fresh that it was nearly a feeling, with all a feeling's delicious power to kill thought.”
― Stella Gibbons, Nightingale Wood

“She liked to watch her father as he read, and to listen to the smoothly rolling tones; she felt no curiosity about what the words meant. It was only Shakespeare and she was used to him.”
― Stella Gibbons, Nightingale Wood

“To tidy up takes time, and she wants all her time for wolfing books...”
― Stella Gibbons, Nightingale Wood

“All the same, I don't mean nothin' you wouldn't like yer mas to know about, see? That's straight, that is. It's Art, and that makes all the difference. *When it ain't Art it's dirt, but if it's Art it's all right, see?*”
― Stella Gibbons, Nightingale Wood

“Twice, in half an hour, Hetty had held up Miss Barlow's plans, and prevented her from moving as quickly as possible on to the next pleasure. Miss Barlow liked her life to be a steady movement towards pleasure. While she was having one, she was thinking about the next and what she should wear while she had that.”
― Stella Gibbons, Nightingale Wood

“How can you eat that sawdust, Father?' she inquired, beginning on eggs and bacon and speaking cheerfully because it was a fine morning and only ten minutes past nine; and somehow, at the beginning of every new day, there was always a chance that this one might be different from all the rest. Something might happen; and then everything would be jollier all round.”
― Stella Gibbons, Nightingale Wood

“He supposed that he wanted her so much that it was making him fond of her;”
― Stella Gibbons, Nightingale Wood

“By this time the Gentle Reader is thinking that people who go to church and sing in the choir should not make love in hayfields.”
― Stella Gibbons, Nightingale Wood

“...not that I ought to grumble. I have money of my own, a luxurious home in excruciating taste, and all the clothes I want. All that is lacking is liberty, an aim to work for, and the conviction that my life is worth living. I am a most fortunate young woman.”
― Stella Gibbons, Nightingale Wood

“... and I wish I was dead.”
“Well, one day you will be, and so shall I; but meanwhile we may as well behave with courage and common sense.”
― Stella Gibbons, Nightingale Wood

“She sat in a corner warm with sunlight, a copy of Home Notes open unread upon her knee, and watched the green meadows flying past while the business men in the carriage talked about news in the papers— awful, as usual— their golf, their gardeners, and the detective stories they were reading.”
― Stella Gibbons, Nightingale Wood

“Hetty was eating, rather than reading, large slabs of a very thin book of contemporary verse each page having a thick wodge of print, without capital letters, starting at the top and running nearly to the bottom. Her eyes were very close to the book and she frowned with concentration.”
― Stella Gibbons, Nightingale Wood