Rumer Godden Quotes

There is an Indian proverb that says that everyone is a house with four rooms, a physical, a mental, an emtional, and a spiritual . Most of us tend to live in one room most of the time but unless we go into every room every day, even if only to keep it aired, we are not a complete person.

If books were Persian carpets, one would not look only at the outer side. because it is the stitch that makes a carpet wear, gives it its life and bloom.

With everything that happens to you, with everyone you meet who is important to you, you either die a little or are born.

Why do religions have edges?" asked Teresa ...
"God is here," said the printed text on the wall. "Yes," said Sophie. "But," she asked, "isn't He everywhere? Then why do they make Him little?" And she thought of those edges, pressing against each other, hurting, jarring, offending, barring one human being from another, shutting away their understanding and their souls.
Yet if you have no edges, thought Sophie, how lonely, how drifting, you must consent to be.

Memory is the only friend of grief.

Of course one never knows in draft if it's going to turn out, even with my age and experience.

If you think you know, you don't ask questions, or if you ask, you don't listen to the answers. Everyone, everything, each thing, is different, so that it isn't safe to know. You - you have to grope.

For an author nothing is as dead as a book once it is written.

Every piece of writing ... starts from what I call a grit ... a sight or sound, a sentence or a happening that does not pass away ... but quite inexplicably lodges in the mind.

The best would be to have friends who came and went away; but if I had to choose between their never coming or never going away, I think I would choose that they do not come.

We would rather not play with you," said Anne.
"Because you're a little rotter," said Tom.

It's only by being obstinate that anything is got, or done.

In California I began to think that, except on the beaches, no-one had the use of their legs.

People don't know the consolations of being unsuccessful ... If I had been successful I should have had no peace or time.

...and as she stood on the Ashford platform waiting for the small train to come in, she seemed already separated from the people around her. Tomorrow I shall not be among you anymore; not of you but mysteriously still with you, thought Philippa. As Lady Abbess of Brede had said, "People think we renounce the world. We don't. We renounce its ways but we are still very much in it and it is very much in us.

Nabir came out to drive the children away, but she stopped him. "I like to be friendly she said."
"But they are not your friends," said Nabir. "You don't know them."
"Respect first," Nabir would have said if he could have explained, "friendship after.

Cleverness is a disease.

I loved Mr. Darcy far more than any of my own husbands.

You must remember garden catalogues are as big liars as house-agents.

remember that people need only be told as much of the truth as they are entitled to know,

I have never understood why "hard work" is supposed to be pitiable. True, some work is soul destroying when it is done against the grain, but when it is part of "making" how can you grudge it? You get tired, of course, but the struggle, the challenge, the feeling of being extended as you never thought you could be is fulfilling and deeply, deeply satisfying.

It is an anxious, sometimes a dangerous thing to be a doll. Dolls cannot choose; they can only be chosen; they cannot 'do'; they can only be done by.

Sometimes,' she said, remembering that morning, 'I write poems that are taller than I am

Most grown people are like icebergs, three-tenths showing, seven-tenths submerged - that is why a collision with one of them is unexpectedly hurtful ...

Harriet told her, 'Captain John was so brave. He stayed there in the battle until his leg was shot off.' Victoria's brown eyes rested thoughtfully on Captain John. Why didn't he stay until the other leg was shot off?' she asked. But he still seemed to like Victoria best.

He had always disliked what he could easily have; he had a passion for the untouched.

My nation, as all nations, is becoming a land without peace, without thought, without mind, Madam Abbess. We are suffocating our spirits in commercial and material things. This is not envy," said Mr. Konishi earnestly. "I am a rich man, with much business, so I have succeeded in all these things, but I know that they are empty.

Once you have felt the Indian dust, you will never be free of it.

The human heart
Is unknowable.
But in my birthplace
The flowers still smell
The same as always.

Eliot always said, "I'm sorry. I had to do that." If you are all right really, really all right, you don't do things that are sorry.

As one gets older being sad and miserable can become a bit of a habit. To counteract this, she suggests making a point of savoring such things as the tastiness of a piece of fruit, or other small things we might have been prone to overlook during our younger, busier days.

To wake for the first time in a new place can be like another birth.

When you learn to read you will be born again ... and you will never be quite so alone again.

The motto was 'Pax', but the word was set in a circle of thorns.

You have to be very strong to live close to God or a mountain, or you'll turn a little mad.

One of the good things about a Catholic church is that it isn't respectable," she had told Richard. "You can find anyone in it, from duchesses to whores, from tramps to kings.

I know now it is children who accept life; grown people cover it up and pretend it is different with drinks.

It is right," said the abbess. "It isn't kind ... What else did our Lord show us, Sister?" she asked, "in this Paschal time? I expect, like you, after all the suffering, betrayal, desertion, intolerable disappointment, and being hurt, he would have liked to have taken refuge with his Father, but he stayed on earth and what did he do> He didn't try then to teach us, bring us up
that was left to the Holy Spirit. He did simple ordinary loving things: loving things, Sister, like consoling Mary Magdalene, walking and talking with the disciples, breaking bread with them, cooking their breakfast. Didn't you," asked the Abbess Catherine, "come here to try and follow him?

Sometimes it seemed to him that the house had a bad wild life of its own; the impression of its evil lingered, in its name, in its atmosphere ...

She made a creche outside the Inn. The natives thought it was wonderful, and Sister Honey was gratified by their numbers.
Why have the devils with wings come to mock at the poor baby?' asked the children, pointing to the angels.
The baby is the Number One Lord Jesus Christ,' Ayah told them.
But he hasn't any clothes on! Aren't they going to give Him anything? Not a little red robe? Not a bit of melted butter?'
This is His Mother,' said Ayah, showing them the little porcelain Virgin in blue and white and pink. 'He is her child.'
That isn't true,' said the women, measuring the baby with their eyes. 'He's too big to be possible. Probably He's a dragon, an evil spirit in the shape of a child, and presently He'll eat up the woman.

A writer who has never explored words, who has never searched, seeded, sieved, sifted through his knowledge and memory ... dictiona ries, thesaurus, poems, favorite paragraphs, to find the right word, is like someone owning a gold mine who has never mined it.

If you love the wrong people it's still love, isn't it, no matter what kind of love ...

I wish I knew when I was going to die,' ninety-six-year-old Dame Frances Anne often said, 'I wish I knew.'
'Why, Dame?'
'Then I should know what to read next.

Wanting is the beginning of getting.

In good company your thoughts run, in solitude your thought is still; it goes deeper and makes for itself a deeper groove, delves. Delve meansa 'dig with a spade'; it means hard work. In talk your mind can be stretched, widened, exhilarated to heights but it cannot be deepened; you have to deepen it yourself.
It needs sturdiness. You will be lonely, you will be depressed; you must expect it; if you were training your body it would ache and be tired. It is worth it. There is a Hindu proverb which says: 'You only grow when you are alone'.