Alice Thomas Ellis Quotes

When a person implores you to be reasonable what he means is that you should speed round forthwith to his point of view.

I like money. That is, it is my preferred means of completing pecuniary transactions. I'm not particularly keen on handing over wads of currency of the realm, but at least one knows where one is, whereas the chequebook is a snare and a delusion, containing misleading numbers of blank cheques when none of the money that the bank contains is rightfully one's own ... I think banks owe their customers a lot by way of compensation for the aggravation they cause them.

I have never had much trouble simultaneously entertaining diametrically opposed propositions, and welcome the possibility that this is not because I have one mind and am out of it, but because I have lots of them, all beavering away on their own.

Death is the last enemy: once we've got past that I think everything will be alright.

Claudia's the sort of girl who goes through life holding onto the sides.

Well, I think adultery is a filthy habit,' said Rose, 'like using someone else's toothbrush.

All his beauty, wit and grace
Lie forever in one place,
He who sang and sprang and moved
Now, in death, is only loved.

Those who live on vanity must, not unreasonably, expect to die of mortification.

Everything looked the same every morning: all in order and just the same. It was in the nights that the difference held sway and there was no comfort for lost and lonely things.

Our only hope rests on the off-chance that God does exist.

They shared an image of the American Christmas
riches, reconciliations, tears, snow, success, sentiment, furs and firs, the shop windows shining like Heaven and everything good for sale.

There is no reciprocity. Men love women, women love children, children love hamsters.

It's when most of the guests have gone that the party really gets interesting - peering under the table and into the bath to see who's stayed and what shape they're in. It is then that those who are still conscious divulge things you had not known before: sometimes about themselves, sometimes about other people and sometimes about you. It does not necessarily make pleasant hearing but it is always fascinating. In the relaxed atmosphere, in the wake of the hubbub, they unwind and grow confidential - nay, indiscreet. If they are not already, they end up as your closest friends.

To cook well and with imagination you have to be in a cheerful and contented frame of mind, and thus inclined to be generous.

I have frequently thought that the dead should be buried with all their belongings. It seems weirdly perverse that their clothes should still be here when the people you love best in the world have gone.

Adolescence is usually typified by an unanswerable combination of innocence and insolence.

Men were made for war. Without it they wandered greyly about, getting under the feet of the women, who were trying to organize the really important things of life.

One can get very fond of the people one meets in bars. The trouble is they then appear sort of different in the daylight and you realize that taking them with you is rather like taking a goldfish for a walk: not entirely correct, and surprising for the next people you run into.

Phrase books seem to be a universal and eternal source of hilarity and I think I know why. Their authors go mad in the course of compiling them.

Scarlet, when aware that she was consciously asking her friend for advice and support, felt guilty, for she had come to believe that advice and support were commodities for which you paid professionals, rather as you paid prostitutes for love and bought your vegetables instead of growing them yourself.

There is a hint of despair in the cry of 'I told you so,' an element of disappointment in the apparent satisfaction when idols turn out to have clay feet. The human race, when it thinks it has proved that no one is superior, is partly gratified and partly depressed.

Optimism is the last resort of those in deep despair. There can't be any optimists in heaven.