Patrick White Quotes

silence, simplicity and humility . . . the only proper state for the artist as for the human being,

"Where have you been, Theodora?," Mrs Goodman asked.
"Walking, Mother."
"And whom did you see?"
Mrs Goodman flung her grammar like a stone.
"I did not see a cat," said Theodora.
Mrs Goodman looked at her daughter, who giggled before she left the room.

She would have liked to love. It was terrible to think she had never loved her son as a man. Sometimes her hands would wrestle together. They were supple, rather plump hands, broad and not yet dry. But wrestling like this together, they were papery and dried-up. Then she would force herself into some deliberate activity or speak tenderly to her good husband, offering him things to eat, and seeing to his clothes. She loved her husband. Even after the drudgery of love she could still love him. But sometimes she lay on her side and said, I have not loved him enough, not yet, he has not seen the evidence of love. It would have been simpler if she had been able to turn and point to the man their son, but she could not.

"I mean one can be so remote in spirit from one's actual father -or mother- it's as though one doesn't belong to them. Spiritually," he dared, "one can be someone else's child."

here was Dorothy, always knotted to the point of strangulation, aspiring to be what she was not, because of that parvenu prince. Mrs Hunter saw him: the groove in the lower lip, above the cleft chin, beneath the pink-shaded restaurant lights. She had ordered tournedos Lulu Watier. After the first shock of mutual disapproval, she felt that she and Hubert were enjoying each other. Alfred said, ‘Out with us, the food is plainer. We don’t feel the need to titillate our palates by dolling it up with a lot of seasoning and fancy sauces.’ He might have worsened the situation if she hadn’t kicked him under the table. They had gone over for the wedding because the old princess insisted she could not travel out to ce pays si lointain et inconnu. It was the first occasion the mountain hadn’t come to Elizabeth Hunter: she couldn’t very well believe it; nor that she would overlook the fact that her little Dorothy was being received into the Roman Catholic Church. But you did: at the nuptial mass there was your plain little girl in the dress by Lanvin tissé expres à la main à Lyon, and none of it could disguise the fact that you were prostituting your daughter to a prince, however desirably suave and hung with decorations. For one instant, out of the chanting and the incense, Elizabeth Hunter experienced a kind of spiritual gooseflesh.

And the cavern of fire was enormous, labyrinthine, that received the man. He branched and flamed, glowed and increased, and was suddenly extinguished in the little puffs of smoke and tired thoughts.

Have you met my housekeeper?’ Dorothy was palpitating. ‘In your old room. Practically as you left it. One has to respect what other people are — essentially — even when they try to destroy themselves. But I offer you your room — your latchkey — financial security — if only you will realize that badly heated Paris apartment is — so — so pernicious.’ Dorothy de Lascabanes had flown to her mother’s bedside to pronounce an ultimatum, a brutal one if necessary, and here she was, her head literally so heavy she had to support it with her hands. ‘I don’t know, Mummy!’ she muttered from behind her wrists. ‘Think it over, darling. Nothing can be decided in — you know I would never let you want — and for that reason.’ They had lapsed. Both of them. The princess might have been sunk in a lake of mercury, but Mrs Hunter was probably born of that substance.

The knot of her hands and the pulses in her throat rejected any possibility that their meeting might be a casual one. But, of course, she could not explain, nor was her face of any more assistance than her tongue; in fact, as she herself knew, in moments of stress she could resemble a congested turkey.

Because he had nothing to hide, he did perhaps appear to have forfeited a little of his strength. But that is the irony of honesty.

Conversation is imperative if gaps are to be filled, and old age, it is the last gap but one.

Two people do not lose themselves at the identical moment, or else they might find each other, and be saved. It is not as simple as that.

There's nothing so inhuman as a human being.

Reason finally holds a gun at its head - and does not always miss.

If she had only been able to touch him, they might perhaps have pooled their secrets and discovered the reason for human confusion. But as that wasn't possible, she went outside, into the garden.

They walked on rather aimlessly. He hoped she wouldn't notice he was touched, because he wouldn't have known how to explain why. Here lay the great discrepancy between aesthetic truth and sleazy reality.