Human Voices Quotes

“Helping other people is a drug so dangerous that there is no cure short of total abstention.”
― Penelope Fitzgerald, Human Voices

“There’s two ways to be selfish. You can think too much about yourself, or you can think too little about others. You’re selfish both ways.”
― Penelope Fitzgerald, Human Voices

“If you can’t face living your life day by day, you must live it minute by minute.”
― Penelope Fitzgerald, Human Voices

“Broadcasting House was in fact dedicated to the strangest project of the war, or of any war, that is, telling the truth. Without prompting, the BBC had decided that truth was more important than consolation, and, in the long run, would be more effective. And yet there was no guarantee of this. Truth ensures trust, but not victory, or even happiness.”
― Penelope Fitzgerald, Human Voices

“Her view of the world was that it divided into ‘exterminators’ and ‘exterminatees’. She would say: ‘I am drawn to people who seem to have been born defeated or even profoundly lost.’ She was a humorous writer with a tragic sense of life.”
― Penelope Fitzgerald, Human Voices

“Yes, the irreplaceables, the things you never use--those are what really matters. I've got a damask table-cloth, you know, and napkins to match for 24 people. I've heard it said that a woman's possessions are part of herself. If she loses her things, her personality undergoes a change”
― Penelope Fitzgerald, Human Voices

“I think one should never be too busy to teach those who are anxious to learn.”
― Penelope Fitzgerald, Human Voices

“Her feeling for Mr Brooks was so much the most important part of her life that it seemed like something which did not belong to her, but which she had to carry about with her, at work or in her room, there was no difference. She had a kind of affection, too, for the love itself, which was so strong, but maintained itself on so little. There had been a time, not at all long ago, when she hadn’t had this responsibility, but it was hard for her to remember how she had felt then.”
― Penelope Fitzgerald, Human Voices

“Under a star-powdered sky the Recorded Programmes Department set up an open microphone on the roof of BH, which caught every sound of the raids until the last enemy aircraft departed into silence. On the roof, too, the parts of the rifle were named to Teddy and Willie by Reception from the main desk of BH, who told them frequently, as he looked down at the pale pink smoke of London’s fires, that it reminded him of a quiet sector of the line in the last show. Most of the staff juniors attended, and sometimes Reception would sit and play poker with them for margarine coupons, while the Regent’s Park guns rocked them like ship’s boys aloft.”
― Penelope Fitzgerald, Human Voices

“As an institution that could not tell a lie, they were unique in the contrivances of gods and men since the Oracle of Delphi. As office managers, they were no more than adequate, but now, as autumn approached, with the exiles crowded awkwardly into their new sections, they were broadcasting in the strictest sense of the word, scattering human voices into the darkness of Europe, in the certainty that more than half must be lost, some for the rook, some for the crow, for the sake of a few that made their mark. And everyone who worked there, bitterly complaining about the short-sightedness of their colleagues, the vanity of the news readers, the remoteness of the Controllers and the restrictive nature of the canteen’s one teaspoon, felt a certain pride which they had no way to express, either then or since.”
― Penelope Fitzgerald, Human Voices

“They started with Big Ben. It’s always got to be relayed direct from Westminster, the real thing, never from disc. That’s got to be firmly fixed in the listeners’ minds. Then, if Big Ben is silent, the public will know that the war has taken a distinctly unpleasant turn.”
― Penelope Fitzgerald, Human Voices

“Annie - although she also knew that those who don't speak have to pay it off in thinking - was resolved on silence. Whatever happened, and after all she was obliged to see Mr brooks two or three times every day, though she by no means looked forward to it, feeling herself more truly alive when she could picture him steadily without seeing him - whatever happened, he needn't know how daft she was.”
― Penelope Fitzgerald, Human Voices

“On the night of September the 7th the BBC received the signal for ‘Invasion Imminent’ from the C in C Home Forces, who now had priority over the Ministry of Information. This signal was followed by another: ‘No bells to ring till advise.’ By an understandable confusion, however, there were church bells which did start ringing in scattered parishes all over the country. Not one was recorded.”
― Penelope Fitzgerald, Human Voices

“She did not expect success, though she knew her own worth. Her writing career was not a usual one. She began publishing late in her life, around sixty, and in twenty years she published nine novels, three biographies and many essays and reviews. She changed publisher four times when she started publishing, before settling with Collins, and she never had an agent to look after her interests, though her publishers mostly became her friends and advocates. She was a dark horse, whose Booker Prize, with her third novel, was a surprise to everyone.”
― Penelope Fitzgerald, Human Voices

“She was in love, as she quite saw, with a middle - aged man who said the same thing to all the girls, who had been a prince for an evening which he'd most likely forgotten already, who had given her a ring with a redcurrant in it and who cared, to the exclusion of all else, for his work.”
― Penelope Fitzgerald, Human Voices