Penelope Fitzgerald > Quotes

“To every separate person a thing is what he thinks it is – in other words, not a thing, but a think.”
― Penelope Fitzgerald, The Gate of Angels

“On the whole, I think you should write biographies of those you admire and respect, and novels about human beings who you think are sadly mistaken.”
― Penelope Fitzgerald

“A good book is the precious life-blood of a master-spirit, embalmed and treasured up on purpose to a life beyond life, and as such it must surely be a necessary commodity.”
― Penelope Fitzgerald, The Bookshop

“Morality is seldom a safe guide for human conduct.”
― Penelope Fitzgerald, The Bookshop

“Duty is what no-one else will do at the moment.”
― Penelope Fitzgerald, Offshore

“She had a kind heart, though that is not of much use when it comes to the matter of self-preservation.”
― Penelope Fitzgerald, The Bookshop

“Courage and endurance are useless if they are never tested.”
― Penelope Fitzgerald, The Bookshop

“Behind their dark glass, the mad own nothing.”
― Penelope Fitzgerald, Charlotte Mew

“There isn’t one kind of happiness, there’s all kinds. Decision is torment for anyone with imagination. When you decide, you multiply the things you might have done and now never can.”
― Penelope Fitzgerald, Offshore

“Helping other people is a drug so dangerous that there is no cure short of total abstention.”
― Penelope Fitzgerald, Human Voices

“Surely you have to succeed, if you give everything you have.'
'I don't see why. Everyone has to give everything they have eventually. They have to die. Dying can't be called a success.”
― Penelope Fitzgerald, The Bookshop

“Understanding makes the mind lazy.”
― Penelope Fitzgerald, The Bookshop

“Tilda cared nothing for the future, and had, as a result, a great capacity for happiness.”
― Penelope Fitzgerald, Offshore

“All distances are the same to those who don't meet.”
― Penelope Fitzgerald, Offshore

“There’s two ways to be selfish. You can think too much about yourself, or you can think too little about others. You’re selfish both ways.”
― Penelope Fitzgerald, Human Voices

“She did not know that morality is seldom a safe guide for human conduct.”
― Penelope Fitzgerald, The Bookshop

“What seemed delicacy in him was usually a way of avoiding trouble; what seemed like sympathy was the instinct to prevent trouble before it started. It was hard to see what growing older would mean to such a person. His emotions, from lack of exercise, had disappeared almost altogether. Adaptability and curiosity, he had found, did just as well.”
― Penelope Fitzgerald, The Bookshop

“It was defeat, but defeat is less unwelcome when you are tired.”
― Penelope Fitzgerald, The Bookshop

“More than that, I believe that the grass is green because green is restful to the human eye, that the sky is blue to give us an idea of the infinite. And that blood is red so that murder will be more easily detected and criminals will be brought to justice. Yes, and I believe that I shall live forever, but I shall live without reason.”
― Penelope Fitzgerald, The Gate of Angels

“A word of advice. If, as a young man, student, you are tormented by a desire for women, it is best to get out into the fresh air as much as possible.”
― Penelope Fitzgerald, The Blue Flower

“Old age is not the same thing as historical interest,’ he said. ‘Otherwise we should both of us be more interesting than we are.”
― Penelope Fitzgerald, The Bookshop

“Florence had noticed one or two eccentricities in herself lately, which might be the result of hard work, or of age, or of living alone. When the letters came, for example, she often found herself wasting time in looking at the postmarks and wondering whoever they could be from, instead of opening them in a sensible manner and finding out at once.”
― Penelope Fitzgerald, The Bookshop

“If there's even one person who might be hurt by a decision, you should never make it.”
― Penelope Fitzgerald, Offshore

“But we weren't meant to live alone,' said Frank.
'Life makes its own corrections.”
― Penelope Fitzgerald, The Beginning of Spring

“... human beings interested her so much that it must always be an advantage to meet another one.”
― Penelope Fitzgerald, At Freddie's

“Richard was the kind of man who has two clean handkerchiefs on him at half past three in the morning.”
― Penelope Fitzgerald, Offshore

“I have read Lolita, as you requested. It is a good book, and therefore you should try to sell it to the inhabitants of Hardborough. They won't understand it, but that is all to the good. Understanding makes the mind lazy.”
― Penelope Fitzgerald, The Bookshop

“She had once seen a heron flying across the estuary and trying, while it was on the wing, to swallow an eel which it had caught. The eel, in turn, was struggling to escape from the gullet of the heron and appeared a quarter, a half, or occasionally three-quarters of the way out. The indecision expressed by both creatures was pitiable. They had taken on too much.”
― Penelope Fitzgerald, The Bookshop

“Her courage, after all, was only a determination to survive. The”
― Penelope Fitzgerald, The Bookshop

“It’s a peculiar thing to take a step forward in middle age, but having done it I don’t intend to retreat.”
― Penelope Fitzgerald, The Bookshop