Noel Streatfeild > Quotes

“It might have all the same; you never can tell what's magic.”
― Noel Streatfeild , Ballet Shoes

“There is no doubt a new dress is a help under all circumstances.”
― Noel Streatfeild, Ballet Shoes

“It's about that applause I want to speak to you. I want you to remember that when you've done a little dance or a song or sketch, the applause which you get is not only because you yourself have done your best, but because each of those men is seeing in you someone he loves at home, and because of you is able to forget for a little while the unhappiness of not being in his home, and in some cases the great tragedy of not knowing what has happened to the children in his family.”
― Noel Streatfeild, Theater Shoes

“I sometimes feel that I'd like to talk about it. Then I find it's better if I don't.”
― Noel Streatfeild

“It was all very well to be ambitious, but ambition should not kill the nice qualities in you.”
― Noel Streatfeild, Ballet Shoes

“During the last six months the little girl Harriet, without her noticing it, had disappeared and a new Harriet had taken her place. A Harriet who looked much the same outside, but was more of a person inside.”
― Noel Streatfeild, Skating Shoes

“I wonder’ – Petrova looked up - ‘If other girls had to be one of us, which of us they’d choose to be?”
― Noel Streatfeild

“Stick to your dreams, don’t let anyone put you off what you want to do.”
― Noel Streatfeild, Skating Shoes

“Here is something I want you to remember: when a dreadful thing happens to a person as it has happened to you, there are 2 ways to take it. You can let it make you cross and bitter or you can accept it, and because you know what it is like to be hurt very badly, let it make you a nicer person.”
― Noel Streatfeild, Dancing Shoes

“Twelve shillings for your sister's skates, and two shillings for your dreams.”
― Noel Streatfeild, Skating Shoes

“Dignity is trained into royal children before they can toddle, graciousness, consideration for others, an unshakable belief in the greatness of their position.”
― Noel Streatfeild, Ballet Shoes

“Both Madame and Miss Jay said that an author wrote down what he or she wanted said, and no actor, amateur or professional, had a right to alter the words in any way whatsoever.”
― Noel Streatfeild, Ballet Shoes

“Walking down to where the bus stopped they picked handfuls of little mauve scabious. When they got to London Tania was still holding hers. She carried them up to the nursery and arranged them in a mug. She tried, as she looked at them, to bring back the downs. It seemed incredible that she had picked them only that morning. That the downs were still there without her. The sea still pouring over the rocks. And neither she nor Geoffrey there to see.”
― Noel Streatfeild, The Whicharts

“...books are very ornamental things to have about.”
― Noel Streatfeild

“I wouldn't fret, fear; we can't all have the same gifts.

Petrova was very depressed, though. She did not want to be a good dancer; but since she had to dance at all is was annoying to see someone younger than herself doing so much better; and then Pauline moving up was a blow, as it left her alone in her class. Pauline had often helped her with steps at home so that she ddi not get on too badly; but with Pauline gone she was suspicious that she might be the dunce of the class.”
― Noel Streatfeild, Ballet Shoes

“Hark. Isn't that the Professor's voice?"
Sylvia harked, and...”
― Noel Streatfeild, Ballet Shoes

“Tania seemed to her such a jumbled person. To have such a real love of machinery, that the commonest engine was an object of beauty. To want so passionately to master machinery until it served you to its utmost limits, and yet to be yourself so tied to people. To have the brain and spirit that should make a pioneer, anchored to such a hyper-sensitive soul.”
― Noel Streatfeild, The Whicharts

“to”
― Noel Streatfeild, The Winter is Past