Wyndham Quotes

Why should they be afraid of us? We aren't hurting them,' she broke in.

"I'm not sure that I know why,' I told her. 'But they are. It's a feel-thing not a think-thing. And the more stupid they are, the more like everyone else they think everyone ought to be. And once they get afraid they become cruel and want to hurt people who are different – ~ John Wyndham

Failure.
That is a word so little to our taste that many think it a virtue to claim that they never admit it. But blind stupidity is not one of the virtues; it is a weakness ... ~ John Wyndham

Miss Wyndham, when I first met you in London, I thought you the most intelligent and the strongest girl I had ever had the pleasure of meeting. She would never moon after some mopey, dark boy. She would look for the man that challenged her, amused her, and made her sparkle and enjoy life. ~ Tarun Shanker

I wish you always the joyous summer you deserve and blame you not for fleeing the stark winter you saw in me.
-Stanton Horne, Lord Wyndham (in his letter to Lady Alicia) ~ Celeste Bradley

Among the other papers I bought at London Airport was the current number of The Beholder. Thought it is, I am aware, not without its merits and even well thought of in some circles, it leaves me with an abiding sense that it is more given to expressing its first prejudices than its second thoughts. Perhaps if it were to go to press a day later ... ~ John Wyndham

...a flabby lemon and pink giant, who hung his mouth open as though he were an animal at the zoo inviting buns--especially when the ladies were present. [on fellow Brit Ford Madox Ford] ~ Percy Wyndham Lewis

In Oppley they're smart, and in Stouch they're smarmy, but Midwich folk are just plain barmy ~ John Wyndham

While overseeing tonight's dinner party, I finally found myself in the presence of Mr. Edwards's famed wit when he asked me whether I had visited the zoo to see the puffins. Somehow Miss Wyndham was the one forced to leave the house. ~ Tarun Shanker

The English certainly and fiercely pride themselves in never praising
themselves. ~ Wyndham Lewis

You're Beau Wyndham! Well, I'll be damned!'
'The prospect,' said Sir Richard, bored, 'leaves me unmoved ~ Georgette Heyer

Marvelously clear-fretted in the unsmoked air, the Abbey rose, silver-grey. It stood detached by the serenity of age from the ephemeral growths around it. It was solid on a foundation of centuries, destined, perhaps, for centuries yet to preserve within it the monuments to those whose work was now all destroyed. I did not loiter there. In years to come I expect some will go o look at the old Abbey with romantic melancholy. But romance of that kind is an alloy of tragedy with retrospect. I was too close. ~ John Wyndham

Knowledge is simply a kind of fuel; it needs the motor of understanding to convert it into power. ~ John Wyndham

The male has been persuaded to assume a certain onerous and disagreeable role with the promise of rewards
material and psychological. Women may in the first place even have put it into his head. BE A MAN! may have been, metaphorically, what Eve uttered at the critical moment in the garden of Eden. ~ Wyndham Lewis

The clock is the most scared thing in a hospital ~ John Wyndham

Why, Miss Wyndham," Mr. Kent replied, looking as chaste and good as a debutante at her presentation to the Queen. "I think we can all agree it's fair to punish these guilty people feigning innocence every day of their lives, all while helping a wrongfully accused innocent. I would certainly never ask you, but I suspect you agree."

"You cannot simply blackmail people into liking me! ~ Tarun Shanker

The trip to Ireland ... ' her father was saying.
'Is to determine his legitimacy,' Wyndham confirmed. And then, with a morbidly jolly expression, he continued, 'It's going to be quite a party. Even my grandmother is going. ~ Julia Quinn

Most people [ ... ] prefer to be coaxed or wheedled, or even driven. That way they never make a mistake: if there is one, it's always due to something or somebody else ~ John Wyndham

The clock is the most sacred thing in a hospital ~ John Wyndham

And again there are no words.
Words exist that can, used by a poet, achieve a dim monochrome of the body's love, but beyond that they fail clumsily.
My love flowed out to her, hers back to me. Mine stroked and soothed. Hers caressed. The distance - and the difference - between us dwindled and vanished. We could meet, mingle, and blend. Neither one of us existed any more; for a time there was a single being that was both. There was escape from the solitary cell; a brief symbiosis, sharing all the word ... ~ John Wyndham

We are not shut away into individual cages from which we can reach out only with inadequate words. ~ John Wyndham

When I was quite small I would sometimes dream of a city - which was strange, because it began before I even knew what a city was. ~ John Wyndham

The more complex they made their world, the less capable they were of dealing with it. They had no means of consensus. They learnt to co-operate constructively in small units; but only destructively in large units. They aspired greedily, and then refused to face the responsibilities they had created. They created vast problems, and then buried their heads in the sands of idle faith. ~ John Wyndham

Feminism was recognized by the average man as a conflict in which it was impossible for a man, as a chivalrous gentleman, as a respecter of the rights of little nations (like little Belgium), as a highly evolved citizen of a highly civilized community, to refuse the claim of this better half to self-determination. ~ Wyndham Lewis

All this drinking and dancing and flirting," Mr. Kent said with a sigh, balancing a glass on the railing for me. "Dreadful business, isn't it?"

"Yes, I don't understand it," I mumbled, accepting the champagne as if it could magically transport me away. No, still here. What on earth was he getting at? Was he toying with me?

"That's just it. Perspective is a curious thing. One day, you see everything from one angle and you think you know what's important," he continued, looking out at the dancers. Then he turned to me, smiling wryly. "Then another day, from another angle, you see what's really important, and everything else just . . . melts away."

"I see," I said without meeting his eyes, hoping he'd be dissuaded. He wasn't. His hand slid across the railing and caught mine.

"I have never seen you here before. Are you one of Mrs. Shine's girls?" he asked. Seen you here before? Downstairs, the tempo of the violins and cellos quickened. As my blood boiled, I could barely hear my own thoughts, and the response left my lips compulsively.

"No."

"Excellent, then might I ask, who is your - "

"I'm sorry, I can't help you," I interrupted, hurrying away past the bar and the horrible paintings toward the stairs.

"Please, wait!" he called from behind, chasing after me. "What is your name?"

"Evelyn Wyndham," I said, giving him a false name. Dammit. Champagne and Mr. Kent did not mix wel ~ Tarun Shanker

When almost half a lifetime has been spent in one conception of order, reorientation is no five-minute business. ~ John Wyndham

I feel most at home in the United States, not because it is intrinsically a more interesting country, but because no one really belongs there any more than I do. We are all there together in its wholly excellent vacuum. ~ Wyndham Lewis

You know, one of the most shocking things about it is to realize how easily we have lost a world that seemed so safe and certain."

She was quite right. It was that simplicity that seemed somehow to be the nucleus of the shock. From very familiarity one forgets all the forces which keep the balance, and thinks of security as normal. It is not. ~ John Wyndham

In temperate countries, where man had succeeded in putting most forms of nature save his own under a reasonable degree of restraint, the status of the triffid was thus made quite clear. But in the tropics, particularly in the dense forest areas, they quickly became a scourge. ~ John Wyndham

We all have our youthful follies, embarassing to recall
but people somehow find it hard to dismiss as a youthful folly anything that has happened to be a financial success. ~ John Wyndham

novelty is a wonderfully short-lived thing. ~ John Wyndham

I do not think I have ever seen a nastier-looking man ... Under the black hat, when I had first seen them, the eyes had been those of an unsuccessful rapist. [on Brit poet Percy Wyndham Lewis] ~ Ernest Hemingway,

But, as I understand it, your God is a universal God; He is God on all suns and all planets. Surely, then, He must have universal form? Would it not be a staggering vanity to imagine that He can manifest Himself only in the form that is appropriate to this particular, not very important planet? ~ John Wyndham

Elephants are VERY BIG. Motor cars go quickly. ~ Wyndham Lewis

Carrying a small notebook with you always, in your pocket or purse, along with a reliable ballpoint pen will enable you to jot down spot observations and quick character sketches before the first sharp impressions fade away. You'll need all kinds of story actors, because even picture books can include a wide range of ages, relationships, occupations, and nationalities. Learn to observe and analyze swiftly, wherever you are. ~ Lee Wyndham

There is no conception more fallacious than the sense of cosiness implied by "Mother Nature". Each species must strive to survive, and that it will do, by every means in its power, however foul - unless the instinct to survive is weakened by conflict with another instinct. ~ John Wyndham

The streets of a modern city are depressing. They are so aimless and so weak in their lines and their masses, that the mind and senses jog on their way like passengers in a train with blinds down in an overcrowded carriage. ~ Wyndham Lewis

So-called austerity, the stoic injunction, is the path towards universal destruction. It is the old, the fatal, competitive path. Pull in your belt is a slogan closely related to gird up your loins, or the guns-butter metaphor. ~ Wyndham Lewis

It seemed to me an odd view to take - rather as if one should protest that one didn't LIKE the idea of dying or being born. I preferred the notion of finding out first how it would be, and then doing what one could about the parts of it one disliked most. ~ John Wyndham

We are against the glorification of "the People," as we are against snobbery. It is not necessary to be an outcast bohemian, to be unkempt or poor, any more than it is necessary to be rich or handsome, to be an artist. Art is nothing to do with the coat you wear. A top-hat can well hold the Sixtine. A cheap cap could hide the image of Kephren. ~ Wyndham Lewis

What is the good of being an island, if you are not a volcanic island? ~ Wyndham Lewis

My English teachers gave me a copy of Atwood's 'The Handmaid's Tale' when I left high school, which has always been very special to me - it was the novel that introduced me to dystopian fiction. I'm also influenced by Edgar Allan Poe, Dickens, John Wyndham and Middle English dream-visions. ~ Samantha Shannon

Wyndham was a bore, in his humble opinion, but everything he did, every last decision and action - they were for others. It was all for Wyndham - the heritage, not the person. It was impossible not to respect such a man.
But this was different. The duke wasn't standing up for his people, he was standing up for one person. It was a far more difficult thing to do. ~ Julia Quinn

Some quotations," said Zellaby, "are greatly improved by lack of context. ~ John Wyndham

I was hiding from them even while I moved among them. ~ John Wyndham

You can't kill an idea the way they try to. You can keep it down awhile, but sooner or later it'll come out. Now what you've got to understand is that the wheel's not evil. Never mind what the scared men all tell you. no discovery is good or evil until men make it that way. -The Wheel, John Wtndham ~ John Wyndham

There was often a great deal of grown-up fuss that seemed disproportionate to causes. ~ John Wyndham

The intelligence suffers today automatically in consequence of the attack on all authority, advantage, or privilege. These things are not done away with, it is needless to say, but numerous scapegoats are made of the less politically powerful, to satisfy the egalitarian rage awakened. ~ Wyndham Lewis

I don't feel quite so lightly about it," I admitted. "But I'm not sure that that's virtue - it's more likely merely habit. And an obstinate refusal to face facts isn't going to bring anything back, or help us at all. I think we'll have to try to see ourselves not as the robbers of all this but more as - well, the unwilling heirs to it." "Yes. I suppose it is - something like that," she agreed in a qualified way. She ~ John Wyndham

No American worth his salt should go around looking for a root. I advance this in all modesty, as a not unreasonable opinion. ~ Wyndham Lewis

Personal honesty takes time to assert itself - if it is ever allowed to. ~ John Wyndham

Britain has had a very honourable tradition of literary sci-fi - H. G. Wells, John Wyndham, J. G. Ballard, Brian Aldiss, Michael Moorcock - but for whatever reason, they have never really been given the time of day on screen. ~ Richard Stanley

You're a terrible feller," said Butcher. "If you had your way, you'd leave us stark naked. We should all be standing on our little island in the savage state of the Ancient Britons; figuratively." He hiccuped. "Yes, figuratively. But in reality the country would be armed better than it ever had been before. And by the sacrifice of these famous 'national characteristics' we cling to sentimentally, and which are merely the accident of a time, we should lay a soil and foundation of unspecific force on which new and realler 'national flavours' would very soon sprout." "I quite agree," Butcher jerked out energetically. He ordered another Laager. "I agree with what you say. If we don't give up dreaming, we shall get spanked. I have given up my gypsies. That was very public-spirited of me?" He looked coaxingly. "If every one would give up their gypsies, their jokes and their gentlemen - . 'Gentlemen' are worse than gypsies. ~ Wyndham Lewis

Revolutionary politics, revolutionary art, and oh, the revolutionary mind, is the dullest thing on earth ... What a stupid word! What a stale fuss! ~ Wyndham Lewis

Many great writers address audiences who do not exist; to address passionately and sometimes with very great wisdom people who do not exist has this advantage - that there will always be a group of people who, seeing a man shouting apparently at somebody or other, and seeing nobody else in sight, will think it is they who are being addressed. ~ Wyndham Lewis

As a result of the feminist revolution, 'feminine' becomes an abusive epithet. ~ Wyndham Lewis

We have both been given the same wish to survive, We are all, you see, toys of the life-force. It made you numerically stronger, but mentally undeveloped. It made us mentally strong but physically weak: now it has set us at one another, to see what will happen. A cruel sport perhaps, from both our points of view, but a very very old one. Cruelty is as old as life itself. There is some improvement: humour and compassion are the most important of human inventions; but they are not very firmly established yet, though promising well. But the life-force is a lot stronger than they are; and it won't be denied its blood-sports. ~ John Wyndham

Miss Wyndham, welcome. Shall I send for your luggage?" he asked.

"Yes, thank you, Tuffins. How have you been? I hope I haven't come at a bad time."

"There is never a bad time for your visits," he replied. As welcoming as I remember. I suspected his fondness for me stemmed from the fact that I was one of the few people who never made a request for "muffins" and snickered at the horrendous rhyme. ~ Tarun Shanker

It's not my fault if I'm not any good at things like that." "I'll differ there," Coker told her. "It's not only your fault - it's a self-created fault. Moreover, it's an affectation to consider yourself too spiritual to understand anything mechanical. It is a petty and a very silly form of vanity. Everyone starts by knowing nothing about anything, but God gives him - and even her - brains to find out with. Failure to use them is not a virtue to be praised; ~ John Wyndham

The first phase of modernism, which so far as the English language goes we associate with Pound and Yeats, Wyndham Lewis and Eliot and Joyce, was clerkly enough, sceptical in many ways; and yet we can without difficulty convict most of these authors of dangerous lapses into mythical thinking. All were men of critical temper, haters of the decadence of the times and the myths of mauvaise foi. All, in different ways, venerated tradition and had programmes which were at once modern and anti-schismatic. This critical temper was admittedly made to seem consistent with a strong feeling for renovation; the mood was eschatological, but scepticism and a refined traditionalism held in check what threatened to be a bad case of literary primitivism. It was elsewhere that the myths ran riot. ~ Frank Kermode

If you want to keep alive in the jungle, you must live as the jungle does. ~ John Wyndham

The Sunday Tidings, which had for some years been pursing a policy of intellectual sensationalism, had never found it easy to maintain its supply of material. The stuff of mere emotional sensationalism, as used by its cheaper and less dignified contemporaries, lay thickly all around, easily malleable into shapes attractive to the constant human passions. Intellectual sensationalism, however, was a much more tricky business. In addition to avoiding the suggestion of sensationalism for sensationalism's sake, it required knowledge, research, careful timing, and, if possible, some literary ability. Inevitably, therefore, its policy was subject to lamentable gaps during which it could find nothing topical on its chosen level to disclose. ~ John Wyndham

There is nothing contemptible about an intoxicated man (if it is nothing more than a bookful of words or a roomful of notes that he has got drunk on). ~ Wyndham Lewis

Happiness is the chief material also in the construction of Utopias. ~ Wyndham Lewis

My love's locked up in a frigidaire, And my heart's in a deep-freeze pack. She's gone with a guy, I'd not know where, But she wrote that she'd never come back. Now she don't care for me no more, I'm just a one-man frozen store, And it ain't nice To be on ice With my love locked up in a frigidaire, And my heart in a deep-freeze pack. While ~ John Wyndham

Spain is an overflow of sombreness ... a strong and threatening tide of history meets you at the frontier. ~ Wyndham Lewis

A sort of botanical glory-hole ~ John Wyndham

Dying for an idea,' again, sounds well enough, but why not let the idea die instead of you? ~ Wyndham Lewis

Sophie dear,' I said. 'Are you in love with him - with this spider-man?'
'Oh, don't call him that - please - we can't any of us help being what we are. His name's Gordon. He's kind to me, David. He's fond of me. You've got to have as little as I have to know how much that means. You've never known loneliness. You can't understand the awful emptiness that's waiting all round us here. I'd have given him babies gladly, if I could ... I - oh, why do they do that to us? Why didn't they kill me? It would have been kinder than this ... '
She sat without a sound. The tears squeezed out from under the closed lids and ran down her face. I took her hand between my own.
I remembered watching. The man with his arm linked in the woman's, the small figure on top of the pack-horse waving back to me as they disappeared into the trees. Myself desolate, a kiss still damp on my
cheek, a lock tied with a yellow ribbon in my hand. I looked at her now, and my heart ached. ~ John Wyndham

The simple rely on a bolstering mass of maxim and precept, so do the timid, so do the mentally lazy – and so do all of us, more than we imagine. ~ John Wyndham

With most people, not describable as artists, all the finer part of their vitality goes into sex. They become third-rate poets during their courtship. All their instincts of drama come out freshly with their wives. The artist is he in whom this emotionality normally absorbed by sex is so strong that it claims a newer and more exclusive field of deployment. Its first creation is the Artist himself, a new sort of person; the creative man. ~ Wyndham Lewis

There is an inability to sustain the tragic mood, a phoenix quality of the mind. It may be helpful or harmful, it is just a part of the will to survive - yet, also, it has made it possible for us to engage in one weakening war after another. But it is a necessary part of our mechanism that we should be able to cry only for a time over even an ocean of spilt milk - the spectacular must soon become the commonplace if life is to be supportable. ~ John Wyndham

If the world would only build temples to Machinery in the abstract then everything would be perfect. The painter and sculptor would have plenty to do, and could, in complete peace and suitably honored, pursue their trade without further trouble. ~ Wyndham Lewis

Miss Wyndham feigned an illness, sneaked out of the house, and walked the London streets unaccompanied for most of the night. At the very least, I'd say she's a better influence on Miss Kent than Lady Kent is. ~ Tarun Shanker

I don't think it had ever occurred to me that man's supremacy is not primarily due to his brain, as most of the books would have one think. It is due to the brain's capacity to make use of the information conveyed to it by a narrow band of visible light rays. His civilization, all that he had achieved or might achieve, hung upon his ability to perceive that range of vibrations from red to violet. Without that, he was lost. ~ John Wyndham

Revolution has become a sort of violent and hollow routine. ~ Wyndham Lewis

It must be, I thought, one of the race's most persistent and comforting hallucinations to trust that "it can't happen here"
that one's own time and place is beyond cataclysm. ~ John Wyndham

Why should I? I've done nothing to be ashamed of. I am not ashamed - I am only beaten ~ John Wyndham

But not she. Her eternity is an article of her faith. Great wars and disasters can ebb and flow, races rise and fall, empires wither with suffering and death, but these are superficialities: she, woman, is perpetual, essential; she will go on for ever. ~ John Wyndham

Anybody who has had a great treasure has always led a precarious existence. ~ John Wyndham

Don't have conversations taking place in empty space. Weave in background details of where the action (dialogue is a form of "action") is taking place. Don't have invisible people talking, either. Let the reader see them as they speak - their facial expressions and gestures. And by all means "cue" the speeches to the speakers. ~ Lee Wyndham

Surely to root politics out of art is a highly necessary undertaking: for the freedom of art, like that of science, depends entirely upon its objectivity and non-practical, non-partisan passion. ~ Wyndham Lewis

I am so glad you decided on the cream silk for the evening, Miss Wyndham," she said.
"Thank you, Lady Atherton." It was an absolutely beautiful gown, a pearly cream that glowed whenever light hit it.
"Such a talented modiste, Mrs. Valant. She hides your figure remarkably well," she added, making me wish to smack her with my overly beaded reticule. ~ Tarun Shanker

The earth has become one big village, with telephones laid on from one end to the other, and air transport, both speedy and safe. ~ Wyndham Lewis

Something entirely unexpected happened to Bert. Yesterday he had seen her as a child grown up, today it was different. There was a pain in his chest and a hammering, the skin on his temples felt oddly tight, his hand trembled so that he almost dropped the bar he was holding. He leaned back against the wheel, staring at her but unable to speak. A long time seemed to pass before he could say anything, and the words sounded clumsy in his own ears. What ~ John Wyndham

You don't seriously suggest that thet're talking when they make that rattling noise. ~ John Wyndham

I'm happy for you Agastya,you're leaving for a more meaningful context. This place is like a parody, a complete farce, they're trying to build another Cambridge here. At my old University I used to teach Macbeth to my MA English classes in Hindi.English in India is burlesque. But now you'll get out of here to somehow a more real situation. In my time I'd wanted to give this Civil Service exam too, I should have. Now I spend my time writing papers for obscure journals on L. H. Myers and Wyndham Lewis, and teaching Conrad to a bunch of half-wits. ~ Upamanyu Chatterjee

So you're in love with her?' she went on.
A word again ... When the minds have learnt to mingle, when no thought is wholly one's own, and each has taken too much of the other ever to be entirely himself alone; when one has reached the beginning of seeing with a single eye, loving with a single heart, enjoying with a single joy; when there can be moments of identity and nothing is separate save bodies that long for one another ... When there is that, where is the word? There is only the inadequacy of the word that exists.
'We love one another,' I said. ~ John Wyndham

Babies, in a world that already has far too many, remain desirable. ~ John Wyndham

... after all, what is a planet but an island in space? ~ John Wyndham

A hundred things are done today in the divine name of Youth, that if they showed their true colors would be seen by rights to belong rather to old age. ~ Wyndham Lewis

The ideas of a time are like the clothes of a season: they are as arbitrary, as much imposed by some superior will which is seldom explicit. ~ Wyndham Lewis

But let me have silence always, in the centre of the shouting - that is essential! Let me have silence so that no pin may drop and not be heard, and not a whisper escape us for all our spouting, nor the needle's scratching upon this gramophone of a circular cosmic spot. Hear me! Mark me! Learn me! Throw the mind's ear open - shut up the mind's eye - all will be music! ~ Wyndham Lewis

For the first rate poet, nothing short of a Queen or a Chimera is adequate for the powers of his praise. ~ Wyndham Lewis

The Old People brought down Tribulation, and were broken into fragments by it. Your father and his kind are a part of those fragments. They have become history without being aware of it. They are determined still that there is a final form to defend: soon they will attain the stability they strive for, in the only form it is granted - a place among the fossils. ~ John Wyndham

Wherever there is objective truth, there is satire. ~ Wyndham Lewis

They persisted in the face of discouragement until they gained the kind of acceptance accorded to the inevitable. ~ John Wyndham

There they sit, with everyone thinking no more of them than they might of a pretty odd lot of cabbages, yet half the time they're pattering and clattering away at one another. Why? What is it they patter about? That's what I want to know.' I ~ John Wyndham

The puritanical potentialities of science have never been forecast. If it evolves a body of organized rites, and is established as a religion, hierarchically organized, things more than anything else will be done in the name of 'decency.' The coarse fumes of tobacco and liquors, the consequent tainting of the breath and staining of white fingers and teeth, which is so offensive to many women, will be the first things attended to. ~ Wyndham Lewis

Contradict yourself. In order to live, you must remain broken up. ~ Wyndham Lewis

I'm terribly sorry, my acquaintance here hardly knows how to talk to people. Please, let's start again and allow me to introduce myself. My name is Nicholas Kent, and accompanying me is the lovely Miss Wyndham, the frowning Mr. Braddock, the eternally calm Miss Chen, and the … Well, that's Mr. Redburn. How are you?"
"Irritated," she replied and another crack of bright light twisted across the sky. ~ Tarun Shanker