Nevil Shute > Quotes

“You cannot argue stupidity, you just have to accept it patiently as one of those things.”
― Nevil Shute, Round the Bend

“It's not the end of the world at all," he said. "It's only the end for us. The world will go on just the same, only we shan't be in it. I dare say it will get along all right without us.”
― Nevil Shute, On the Beach

“She looked at him in wonder. "Do people think of me like that? I only did what anybody could have done."
"That's as it may be," he replied. "The fact is, that you did it.”
― Nevil Shute, A Town Like Alice

“Without work men are utterly undone.”
― Nevil Shute, Ruined City

“I'm glad we haven't got newspapers now. It's been much nicer without them.”
― Nevil Shute, On the Beach

“I know you've taken risks to do these things. Do Please be careful."
"Don't worry about me," he said. "You've got enough troubles on your own plate, my word. But we'll come out all right, so long as we just keep alive, that's all we got to do. Just keep alive another two years, till the war's over.”
― Nevil Shute, A Town Like Alice

“Some games are fun even when you lose. Even when you know you're going to lose before you start. It's fun just playing them.”
― Nevil Shute, On the Beach

“Maybe we've been too silly to deserve a world like this.”
― Nevil Shute, On the Beach

“You know," he said, "now that I've got used to the idea, I think I'd rather have it this way. We've all got to die one day, some sooner and some later. The trouble always has been that you're never ready, because you don't know when it's coming. Well, now we do know, and there's nothing to be done about it. I kind of like that. I kind of like the thought that I'll be fit and well up till the end of August and then - home. I'd rather have it that way than go on as a sick man from when I'm seventy to when I'm ninety.”
― Nevil Shute, On the Beach

“It's no good going on living in the ashes of a dead happiness.”
― Nevil Shute, A Town Like Alice

“If what they say is right we're none of us going to have time to do all that we planned to do. But we can keep on doing it as long as we can.”
― Nevil Shute, On the Beach

“Maybe we've been too silly to deserve a world like this," he said.
The scientist said, "That's absolutely and precisely right.”
― Nevil Shute, On the Beach

“You can call a sunset by a filthy name, but you do not spoil its beauty, monsieur.”
― Nevil Shute, Pied Piper

“Security was now a thing of the past though it took a conscious effort to remember it; with no enemy in all the world there was little but the force of habit in it.”
― Nevil Shute, On the Beach

“I suppose it is because I have lived rather a restricted life myself that I have found so much enjoyment in remembering what I have learned in these last years about brave people and strange scenes. I have sat here day after day this winter, sleeping a good deal in my chair, hardly knowing if I was in London or the Gulf country, dreaming of the blazing sunshine, of poddy-dodging and black stockmen, of Cairns and of Green Island. Of a girl that I met forty years too late, and of her life in that small town that I shall never see again, that holds so much of my affection.”
― Nevil Shute

“I’d say the way to look at it is this. You took a lot of trouble answering letters from a stranger, and maybe some of them were rather stupid questions. I wouldn’t know. The fact is that you made a friend, and now this friend’s going to a little bit of trouble to help you. That’s fair enough. Look at it that way.”
― Nevil Shute, Trustee from the Toolroom

“This is the way the world ends This is the way the world ends This is the way the world ends Not with a bang but a whimper.”
― Nevil Shute, On the Beach

“She lived in the dream world of unreality, or else she would not admit reality; he did not know. In any case, he loved her as she was. It might never be used, but it would give her pleasure to have it.”
― Nevil Shute, On the Beach

“Mary looked at her gratefully. “Well, that’s what I think. I mean, I couldn’t bear to—to just stop doing things and do nothing. You might as well die now and get it over.” Moira nodded. “If what they say is right, we’re none of us going to have time to do all that we planned to do. But we can keep on doing it as long as we can.”
― Nevil Shute, On the Beach

“By 1948 I was safe on my feet and able to get about quite normally, but I was thirty-four and life was slipping past me. I could not face burial alive in Coombargana at that age after all that I had been and done during the war, and I began to feel I should go crazy if I didn’t get away from it to England again, where things were happening. I think my parents understood, because they made no objection when I suggested that I should go back to Oxford for a year and finish taking my degree. That was five years ago. What I didn’t realise then was that it wasn’t England I was really fretting for. It was my lost youth.”
― Nevil Shute, Requiem for a Wren

“But he got to his feet, his brows contacted in a frown. "You weren't speaking seriously?"
I moved towards the door, "It doesn't pay to be serious," I said. "It only means that people laugh behind your back, instead of to your face.”
― Nevil Shute, Lonely Road

“doubt if he’d have made the grade for the rabbit pack, though. He wasn’t fierce enough; he was one of those bumbling, good humoured, rather incompetent dogs, good for a lonely man or girl to look after.”
― Nevil Shute, The Breaking Wave

“Only by an act of treachery to those who believe in us can either of us escape.”
― Nevil Shute, Round the Bend

“There's no dignity, no decency, or health today for men that haven't got a job. All other things depend on work today.”
― Nevil Shute, Ruined City

“The Negro said, “I don’t feel so good right now. Say, if I’d known that cutting your throat gave you septicaemia, I sure would have made a job of it.” “Or else not done it at all,” said Turner. The Negro paused for a moment in abstraction. “Well,” he said at last, “that would have been another way.”
― Nevil Shute, The Chequer Board

“It was incongruous at Coombargana. In a great city such things happen now and then, where people are too strained and hurried to pay much attention to the griefs of others, but in a small rural community like ours, led by wise and tolerant people such as my father and mother, staffed by good types culled and weeded out over the years, such secret, catastrophic griefs do not occur. Troubles at Coombargana had always been small troubles in my lifetime.”
― Nevil Shute, The Breaking Wave

“Everything had come good at last, after so many years. I had reached the happy ending of the story, and I was quietly, serenely happy. In the soft, velvety darkness I lay utterly at peace for I had finished with all heartaches, with all pains and worries; nothing could touch me now. I had finished the book but I could take it up and read it over and over again, and I would do so, secure in the knowledge of the happiness in the last chapter.”
― Nevil Shute, The Rainbow and the Rose

“I want to drink hard liquor, as you call it, before lunch. I've got a mouth like the bottom of the parrot's cage. You wouldn't want me to throw a screaming fit in front of all your officers.”
― Nevil Shute, On the Beach

“In the quiet serenity of the night that did not seem very important; it was only important that she should shut up and not spoil his evening. “Now you get on and start her up, and shut up talking.” She opened her mouth to give as good as she got, but said nothing. What he had told her was incredible; and yet it was what she had secretly feared for some time.”
― Nevil Shute, The Chequer Board

“Even into this quiet place the war had reached like the tentacle of an octopus and had touched this girl and brought about her death. Like some infernal monster, still venomous in death, a war can go on killing people for a long time after it’s all over.”
― Nevil Shute, The Breaking Wave