M.M. Kaye > Quotes

“Common sense will nearly always stand you in better stead than a slavish adherence to the conventions.”
― M.M. Kaye, Shadow of the Moon

“...for though she was ordinary, she possessed health, wit, courage, charm, and cheerfulness. But because she was not beautiful, no one ever seemed to notice these other qualities, which is so often the way of the world.”
― M.M. Kaye, The Ordinary Princess

“This story was written many moons ago under an apple tree in an orchard in Kent, which is one of England's prettiest counties . . . I had read at least twenty of the [fairy tales] when I noticed something that had never struck me before--I suppose because I had always taken it for granted. All the princesses, apart from such rare exceptions as Snow White, were blond, blue-eyed, and beautiful, with lovely figures and complexions and extravagantly long hair. This struck me as most unfair, and suddenly I began to wonder just how many handsome young princes would have asked a king for the hand of his daughter if that daughter had happened to be gawky, snub-nosed, and freckled, with shortish mouse-colored hair? None, I suspected. They would all have been of chasing after some lissome Royal Highness with large blue eyes and yards of golden hair and probably nothing whatever between her ears! It was in that moment that a story about a princess who turned out to be ordinary jumped into my mind, and the very next morning I took my pencil box and a large rough-notebook down to the orchard and, having settled myself under an apple tree in full bloom, began to write . . . the day was warm and windless and without a cloud in the sky. A perfect day and a perfect place to write a fairy story.”
― M. M. Kaye, The Ordinary Princess

“It is not an easy thing to be a woman and love with the whole heart: which men do not understand -- having many loves, and delighting in danger and war.”
― M.M. Kaye

“If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer: let him step to the music that he hears.”
― M.M. Kaye, The Far Pavilions

“Oh, Lord, forgive three sins that are due to my human limitations.
Thou art Everywhere, but I worship thee here:
Thou art without form, but I worship thee in these forms;
Thou needest no praise, yet I offer thee these prayers and salutations.
Lord, forgive three sins that are due to my human limitations."
- Ash”
― M. M. Kaye

“They rode out together from the shadows of the trees, leaving the Bala Hissar and the glowing torch of the burning Residency behind them, and spurred away across the flat lands towards the mountains...
And it may even be that they found their Kingdom.”
― M. M. Kaye, The Far Pavilions

“Lavender's blue,
Rosemary's green,
When you are king,
I shall be queen”
― M.M. Kaye, The Ordinary Princess

“India and its peoples; not the British India of cantonments and Clubs, or the artificial world of hill stations and horse shows, but that other India: that mixture of glamour and tawdriness, viciousness and nobility. A land full of gods and gold and famine. Ugly as a rotting corpse and beautiful beyond belief …”
― M.M. Kaye, The Far Pavilions

“I cannot see anything admirable in stupidity, injustice and sheer incompetence in high places, and there is too much of all three in the present administration.”
― M.M. Kaye, The Far Pavilions

“for the public, it seemed, preferred to believe that which disturbed it least and to ignore troublesome information. Which is a failing common to all nations.”
― M.M. Kaye, The Far Pavilions

“But surely Uncle Akbar could not be dead as they were dead? There must be something indestructible — something that remained of men who had walked and talked with one and told one stories, men whom one had loved and looked up to. But where had it gone? It was all very puzzling, and he did not understand.”
― M.M. Kaye, The Far Pavilions

“What could be more entrancing than a carefree nomadic existence camping, moving, exploring strange places and the ruins of forgotten empires, sleeping under canvas or the open sky, and giving no thought to the conventions and restriction of the modern world?”
― M.M. Kaye, The Far Pavilions

“There is no particular merit in fighting for your own skin when you know that it is fight or die, but there is considerable merit in being prepared to die when you know you can escape quite easily. Put at its lowest, there is a certain stubborn foolhardy heroism in that.”
― M.M. Kaye, Shadow of the Moon

“Nor have I become so blind that I cannot see what is written on your face, or so deaf that I cannot hear what is in your voice; and I am not yet so old that I cannot remember my own youth”
― M.M. Kaye, The Far Pavilions

“Ash said slowly: ‘I don’t believe that anyone can have no regrets … Perhaps there are times when even God regrets that He created such a thing as man. But one can put them away and not dwell upon them; and I’ll have you, Larla … that alone is enough happiness for any man.’ He”
― M.M. Kaye, The Far Pavilions

“Did you ever read Aurora Leigh? – “Earth’s crammed with heaven, and every common bush afire with God; but only he who sees takes off his shoes.”
― M.M. Kaye, The Far Pavilions

“Perhaps I myself am a pompous and conceited old fool. And perhaps if these fools I complain of were French or Dutch or German I would not mind so much, because then I could say 'What else can you expect?' and feel superior. It is because they are men of my own race that I would have them all good.”
― M.M. Kaye, The Far Pavilions

“It was an age of lavishness. Of enormous meals, enormous families, enormous spreading skirts and an enormous, spreading Empire. An age of gross living, grinding poverty, inconceivable prudery, insufferable complacency and incomparable enterprise.”
― M.M. Kaye, Shadow of the Moon

“people everywhere are suspicious of strangers and hostile towards anyone different from themselves”
― M.M. Kaye, The Far Pavilions

“Because men are sentimental over women they will throw away military advantages, and hesitate and weigh the chances of failure when attack is their best or only hope, and lose their opportunity because they "have to think of the women and children". Men who would otherwise not dream of surrendering will make terms with an enemy in return for the safety of a handful of women. If a man is killed, it is an accident of war; but if a woman or a child is killed it is a barbarous murder and a hundred lives - or a thousand - are sacrificed to avenge it. It is only a man like John Nicholson who has the courage to write, and mean it, that the safety of "women and children in some crises is such a very minor consideration that it ceases to be a consideration at all". If only more men thought like that you could all stay in Lunjore and be damned to you!”
― M.M. Kaye, Shadow of the Moon

“they were a fanatically independent people, much addicted to intrigue, treachery and murder, and that among their other national traits was an intolerance of rulers (or, if it came to that, of any form of authority whatsoever, other than their own desires).”
― M.M. Kaye, The Far Pavilions

“I do not doubt that you would have done all that was in your power to make her happy. But it is not in your power to build a new world; or to turn back time”
― M.M. Kaye, The Far Pavilions

“Have you really become so much an Angrezi that you believe your people have only to say “It is forbidden”, for such old customs as this to cease immediately? Bah!”
― M.M. Kaye, The Far Pavilions

“People everywhere preferred to make their own mistakes, and resented strangers (even efficient and well-meaning ones) interfering with their affairs”
― M.M. Kaye, The Far Pavilions

“And fortunately for me, neither of my parents would have known what you were talking about if you mentioned that modern and grossly overworked epithet 'racist'. To Tacklow, as with the early Greeks and Romans, and in their day the Venetians, all men were 'people' irrespective of race or color: there were good people and bad ones, nice or nasty ones, clever or stupid ones, interesting or boring ones - plus all the degrees that range between those poles. But all the same. Just 'people'. His fellow men.”
― M.M. Kaye, The Sun in the Morning: My Early Years in India and England

“I can still remember the shock that a small girl, brought up to believe that lying was a major sin, experienced on hearing such a loved and admired grown-up calmly admitting to telling lies as though it did not matter at all! It stood all my ideas of morality on their heads and left me totally bewildered. But it taught me an early and valuable lesson: that people of different nationalities do not necessarily hold similar views or think in the same way -just as they do not worship the same God or conform to the same laws. If the Khan Sahib felt it was all right for his people to tell lies, then it must be right -for them. But that didn't mean it was all right for me, for I was an Angrezi (English) and Angrezis obviously thought differently.”
― M.M. Kaye, The Sun in the Morning: My Early Years in India and England

“because Afghanistan is no country to fight a war in – and an impossible one to hold if you win.”
― M.M. Kaye, The Far Pavilions

“I, however, had not been too late. It has been my great good fortune to see India when that once fabulously beautiful land was as lovely, and to a great extent as peaceful and unspoiled, as Eden before the Fall. To live for two years in Peking in an old Chinese house, once the property of a Manch Prince, at a time when the citizens of that country still wore their national costumes instead of dressing up - or down! - in dull Russian-style "uniforms. To have visited Japan before war, the Bomb and the American occupation altered it beyond recognition, when the sight of a Japanese woman in European dress was unusual enough to make you turn and stare...”
― M.M. Kaye, The Sun in the Morning: My Early Years in India and England

“In the absence of any concrete evidence. I plump for Leonard Stock as the murderer. First, because he's the most unlikely person, and as anyone who has ever read a murder story knows, it's always the most unlikely person who turns out to have done the deed--and fifty thousand authors can't be wrong.”
― M.M. Kaye, Death in the Andamans