Barbara Comyns > Quotes

“It was Sunday morning, and old people passed me like sad grey waves on their way to church.”
― Barbara Comyns, The Vet's Daughter

“Now I lay down on this tree and felt a lonely sadness coming over me in waves. Slow tears ran from my eyes and trickled into my ears. I thought, 'I even cry in a humble, common way, with tears flowing into my ears.' But the humble, common tears had relieved me[...]”
― Barbara Comyns, The Vet's Daughter

“Her face worked in an odd way, like knitting coming undone.”
― Barbara Comyns, The Vet's Daughter

“She cleared her throat once or twice, and said something about poor people should eat a lot of herrings, as they were most nutritious, also she had heard poor people eat heaps of sheeps' heads and she went on to ask if I ever cooked them. I said I would rather be dead than cook or eat a sheep's head; I'd seen them in butchers' shops with awful eyes and bits of wool sticking to their skulls. After that helpful hints for the poor were forgotten.”
― Barbara Comyns, Our Spoons Came from Woolworths

“I had a kind of idea if you controlled your mind and said, 'I won't have any babies' very hard, they most likely wouldn't come. I thought that was what was meant by birth-control, but by this time I knew that idea was quite wrong.”
― Barbara Comyns, Our Spoons Came from Woolworths

“When I left the kitchen the whole family were all gazing upwards at the dancing flies.”
― Barbara Comyns, The Vet's Daughter

“Tenía la idea de que, si ejercías un control mental y te decías muy seria: «No tendré hijos», seguramente no vendrían.”
― Barbara Comyns, Our Spoons Came from Woolworths

“I dreaded going to the farm, but when I arrived there, it was very much better than I expected. Things one dreads usually are: it's only the things we look forward to that go all wrong.”
― Barbara Comyns, Our Spoons Came from Woolworths

“Two people were swimming in the sea
One was alive and the other dead. See.”
― Barbara Comyns, Who Was Changed and Who Was Dead

“I began to feel frightened and depressed, and thought, 'This is my punishment for being an adulteress.' Then I remembered I was even poorer before I was one, so perhaps it was a punishment for something I had forgotten.”
― Barbara Comyns, Our Spoons Came from Woolworths

“She came to a little wrecked pleasure-steamer, which had become embedded in the mud several summers ago and which no one had bothered to remove. It had been a vulgar, tubby little boat when it used to steam through the water with its handful of holiday-makers, giving shrill whistles at every bend and causing a wash that disturbed the fishermen as they sat peacefully on the banks; but, now it lay sideways in the mud with its gaudy paint all bleached, it was almost beautiful.”
― Barbara Comyns, Who Was Changed and Who Was Dead

“Afterwards they went down the garden together to pick peas for supper, and to dream their dreams in the summer dusk.”
― Barbara Comyns, Who Was Changed and Who Was Dead

“Everywhere in the house there were sad little reminders—a limp string shopping-bag hanging from the kitchen door; a fortune-telling book in the dresser-drawer; a fern in the dining-room window that had died from neglect since she had ceased to tend it; and one small black glove mixed up with the string she used to save—little things like that were everywhere.”
― Barbara Comyns, The Vet's Daughter

“I think I would rather hear roundabout music than any symphony concert. I know Beatrix would be disgusted to hear me say so, but its so gladsad somehow and makes me feel brave, late at night long after we were in bed we could hear the music floating over the river, and see the reflected moving lights on our walls, it was beautiful to lie in bed like that.”
― Barbara Comyns, Sisters by a River

“After a time Emma opened the picnic basket and they ate honey sandwiches with ants on them and drank the queer tea that always comes from a thermos.”
― Barbara Comyns, Who Was Changed and Who Was Dead

“Escribía y era una intelectual de marca mayor, le interesaban mucho los derechos de la mujer pero le desagradaban los niños, los recién nacidos en particular, aunque puede que fuera porque ella no los había tenido ni podía tenerlos ya, puesto que Simeon, su marido, la había dejado.”
― Barbara Comyns, Our Spoons Came from Woolworths

“I’ve been writing a poem,” she said, “but there are only two lines and I don’t think they rhyme.” And she read out loud— “Two people were swimming in the sea One was alive and the other dead. See.”
― Barbara Comyns, Who Was Changed and Who Was Dead

“Habría dado cualquier cosa por pasear por una de esas típicas calles londinenses, con casas de sucios ladrillos amarillos a los lados, altas casas pareadas con un tramo de escalones hasta la puerta y barandillas y verjas de hierro que parecen enjaular unos arbustos ralos y desgreñados, y, de vez en cuando, un gato dormido en un alféizar.”
― Barbara Comyns, Our Spoons Came from Woolworths

“It was after breakfast, and I went into the dining-room to clear away the remains of Father's kippers. The sun came slanting in through the window and touched the mantelpiece, where the monkey's skull used to lie. I placed a damp log on the recently lighted fire. A soft hissing sound came and a frantic woodlouse rushed about the smoking bark. I rescued it with a teaspoon, although I had no fondness for woodlice. It was a pity to let it burn—and there it was, squirming on the damp tea-spoon, grey and rather horrible. With one hand I pushed up the window and with the other placed it on the sill, where it crawled about leaving a small wet trail of tea among the winged sycamore-seeds that had lodged there. The air was sharp and wintry, and the street very still. The only people to be seen were a few pale women with black string bags. Under the gate a dried leaf rustled very gently. I thought, 'It's minutes like this that seem to last so long.”
― Barbara Comyns, The Vet's Daughter

“Then he said, "I'm going to be honest with you. I expect you have a pretty good idea of what I'm going to say, and have realized I don't love you anymore. I am very fond of you, but I loathe this domestic life. The children are quite beautiful, but they don't mean a thing to me. I don't feel like a father and have never wanted to be one. I may be inhuman and selfish, but I must be, life is so short, and the young part of our lives is going so quickly. I must be free to enjoy it and not be weighed down by all these responsibilities ."

I said, "Did you often go to Peter Pan when you were a child?”
― Barbara Comyns, Our Spoons Came from Woolworths

“Eva was rather impressed that we had made all the necessary arrangements. I did not tell her that I would shortly be leaving my job, because already she had said that penniless people had no right to have children. She didn’t seem to think it was Charles’s baby — only mine, because later on, when I was upstairs putting on my coat, she kissed me quite kindly, but spoilt it by saying, ‘I shall never forgive you, Sophia, for making my son a father at twenty-one.’ I almost added, ‘And you a grandmother at forty-six.”
― Barbara Comyns, Our Spoons Came from Woolworths

“James was teaching me how to knit baby clothes, but I didn’t get on very well when he wasn’t there, but I did manage two vests that resembled badly made porridge.”
― Barbara Comyns

“All the golden guineas had gone now and we only had the little I earned as a model. With this we had to pay for food, light and heat, and laundry and of course rent. Sometimes we were several weeks behind and the landlady would ask us for money each time we went in or out of the house. I would hear her talking about us to the other people who lived on the floor below and felt dreadfully ashamed.

Charles did not mind. He just said she was a silly old bitch. As soon as Charles started to paint he forgot about the cold and money worries. That is how artists should be, but I was only a commercial artist, so I went on worrying.”
― Barbara Comyns, Our Spoons Came from Woolworths

“As the day went on the hens, locked in their black shed, became depressed and hungry and one by one they fell from their perches and committed suicide in the dank water below, leaving only the cocks alive. The sorrowful sitting hens, all broody, were in another dark, evil-smelling shed and they died too. They sat on their eggs in a black broody dream until they were covered in water. They squarked a little; but that was all. For a few moments just their red combs were visible above the water, and then they disappeared.”
― Barbara Comyns, Who Was Changed and Who Was Dead