An Avenue Of Stone Quotes

“Those who live their lives quietly, unmoved by either great sorrows or great joy, are often, in their final years, granted the dispensation of Discovery. Now, for the first time, they find out the secondary roads of the imagination, the side-streets, the alley-ways, the low doors each with a key in the lock.

...But those who have lived richly, exhaustively, staring into every face, attentive to every voice, are only too often pursued by the spinster Furies, and are driven at the end down avenues of stone where the walls reach to the sky, and the doors are sealed, and the pavements are rubbered against all sound but the beat of the hurrying heart.”
― Pamela Hansford Johnson, An Avenue Of Stone

“The trouble with you is,' she said, half-smiling, 'that you're such an optimist. You really believe that if things are hopelessly bad, then they must improve. What nonsense it is! Things can be bad, and stay bad. And they can be endured... Can't you see that we've all got to make the best of things as they are?”
― Pamela Hansford Johnson, An Avenue Of Stone