Patrick Hamilton > Quotes

“Too much thought is bad for the soul, for art, and for crime. It is also a sign of middle age.”
― Patrick Hamilton

“[...] at any rate there is nothing in the world more dreary, damping, and obscurely perturbing than to come out of a cinema in the afternoon to a noisy world.”
― Patrick Hamilton, Twenty Thousand Streets Under the Sky

“Your mind indeed is tired. Your mind so tired that it can no longer work at all. You do not think. You dream. Dream all day long. Dream everything. Dream maliciously and incessantly. Don't you know that by now?”
― Patrick Hamilton, Gas Light

“The Law saith, Where is thy righteousness, goodness, and satisfaction? The Gospel saith, Christ is thy righteousness, goodness, and satisfaction.”
― Patrick Hamilton

“London, the crouching monster, like every other monster has to breathe, and breathe it does in its own obscure, malignant way. Its vital oxygen is composed of suburban working men and women of all kinds, who every morning are sucked up through an infinitely complicated respiratory apparatus of trains and termini into the mighty congested lungs, held there for a number of hours, and then, in the evening, exhaled violently through the same channels.”
― Patrick Hamilton, The Slaves of Solitude

“Unto those who have,it shall,uncannily, be given.Unto those who have not,it shall,uncannily,be taken away.”
― Patrick Hamilton

“Though it had no wide reputation, all manner of people frequented 'The Midnight Bell.' This was in its nature, of course, since it is notorious that all manner of people frequent all manner of public-houses - which in this respect resemble railway stations and mad-houses.”
― Patrick Hamilton, Twenty Thousand Streets Under the Sky

“She was decidedly attractive, he saw, but in an ill-natured, ungracious way. Because of his connection with Fitzgerald, Carstairs & Scott, Johnnie had an extensive knowledge of the external appearance and different modes of behavior of a great variety of attractive women: they came up to the office in shoals, with their nails dipped in blood and their faces covered with pale cocoa. And some were charming and simple beneath their masks, and some were complex and arrogant. This girl belonged to the latter type, the type which would ignore or stare surlily at him if he spoke to them, until they learned that the actual money came through him, when their manner sweetened wonderfully. This girl wore her attractiveness not as a girl should, simply, consciously, as a happy crown of pleasure, but rather as a murderous utensil with which she might wound indiscriminately right and left, and which she would only employ to please when it suited her purpose. They were like bad-tempered street-walkers, without walking the street.”
― Patrick Hamilton, Hangover Square

“Only at dawn should a man awake from excess - at dawn agleam with red and sorrowful resolve.”
― Patrick Hamilton, Twenty Thousand Streets Under the Sky

“Mr. Thwaites was, of course, a pronounced and leading Christmasist, being the instinctive leader of everything irritating and depressing, and the others followed him.”
― Patrick Hamilton, The Slaves of Solitude

“God help us, God help all of us, each one, every one, all of us'. Patrick Hamilton at the concusion of 'The Slaves of Solitude'.”
― Patrick Hamilton

“The meal was breakfast: the subject, utility clothing. 'As for the stuff they're turning out for men nowadays,' said Mr Thwaites bitterly, 'I wouldn't give it to my Valet.'

Mr Thwaites' valet was quite an old friend. An unearthly, flitting presence, whose shape, character, age, and appearance could only be dimly conceived, he had been turning up every now and again ever since Miss Roach had known Mr Thwaites. Mostly he was summoned into being as one from whom all second-rate, shoddy, or inferior articles were withheld. But sometimes things were good enough for Mr Thwaites' valet, but would not do for Mr Thwaites. ”
― Patrick Hamilton, The Slaves of Solitude

“It was not so much what Vicki did that night: it was what she said. It was not so much her behaviour: it was her vocabulary!”
― Patrick Hamilton, The Slaves of Solitude

“And didst thou imbibe mighty potions from the fruit of the grape (...)? And hast thou one Ache, this morning (...) appertaining unto Head, and much repentance in thy Soul forsooth?”
― Patrick Hamilton, The Slaves of Solitude

“He had further narrowed his mind by a considerable amount of travel abroad, where he had again always made his way to the small hotels.”
― Patrick Hamilton, The Slaves of Solitude

“If he knew anything of her habits, she was certain to be somewhere about. He was not looking for her. He was submitting himself to the possibility of encounter.”
― Patrick Hamilton, Twenty Thousand Streets Under the Sky: A London Trilogy

“Thus looked at from outside, these guests
--in this dead-and-alive dining room, of this dead-and-alive house, of this dead-and-alive street, of this dead-and-alive little town--in grey, dead winter of the deadliest part of the most deadly war in history--thus seen from a detached point of view, they presented an extraordinary spectacle.”
― Patrick Hamilton, The Slaves of Solitude

“Dawn, slowly filling Church Street with grey light, disclosed another day of war. Because it did this, this dawn bore no more resemblance to a peace-time dawn than the aspect of nature on a Sunday bears a resemblance to the aspect of nature on a weekday. Thus it seemed that dawn itself had been grimly harnessed to the war effort.”
― Patrick Hamilton, The Slaves of Solitude

“What a thing this sleeplessness was! . . . If sleep, she thought, could be compared to a gentle lake in a dark place, then sleeplessness was a roaring ocean, a raging, wind-buffeted voyage, lit with mad rocket-lights, pursued by wild phantoms from behind, plunging upon fearful rocks ahead, a mad tempest of the past and present and future all in one. Through all this the pale, strenuous mariner must somehow steer a way, until at last the weary dawn, not of sleep, but of resignation to sleeplessness, comes to calm the waters of the mind.”
― Patrick Hamilton, The Slaves of Solitude

“...elderly guests were already setting about their business--the business, that is to say, of those who in fact had no business on this earth save that of cautiously steering their respective failing bodies along paths free from discomfort and illness in the direction of the final illness which would exterminate them.”
― Patrick Hamilton, The Slaves of Solitude

“Those entering the Saloon Bar of the ‘The Midnight Bell’ from the street came through a large door with a fancifully frosted glass pane, a handle like a dumb-bell a brass inscription ‘Saloon Bar and Lounge,’ and a brass adjuration to Push. Anyone temperamentally so wilful, careless, or incredulous as to ignore this friendly admonition was instantly snubbed, for this door would only succumb to Pushing. Nevertheless hundreds of temperamental people nightly argued with this door and got the worst of it. Given proper treatment, however, it swung back in the most accomplished way, and announced you to the Saloon Bar with a welcoming creak.”
― Patrick Hamilton, Twenty Thousand Streets Under the Sky

“Those were the days when the three of them were smoking their first pipes, growing their first moustaches, having their first drunks and going with their first women, glorying in their release from meaningless discipline, in the prospect of earthly pleasures and an independent existence.”
― Patrick Hamilton, Hangover Square

“He had been fooled. He had not, after all, had a great time: he had merely been drinking again.”
― Patrick Hamilton, Twenty Thousand Streets Under the Sky

“Wanting no other man save the one she could not get, any other man, the nearest at hand, served her purpose.”
― Patrick Hamilton, Hangover Square

“The madness of Christmas is not to be resisted by any human means. It either stealthily creeps or crudely batters its way into every fastness or fortress of prudence all over the land.”
― Patrick Hamilton, The Slaves of Solitude

“He had three of his five pounds left. He now offered her two. After a little argument she accepted them. She looked at him as though she thought him too wonderful for words, and he rather agreed with her.”
― Patrick Hamilton, Twenty Thousand Streets Under the Sky

“It was not for the piano-tuner to know that in this still, grey, winter-gripped dining-room, this apparent mortuary of desire and passion (in which the lift rumbled and knives and forks scraped upon plates), waves were flowing forward and backward, and through and through, of hellish revulsion and unquenchable hatred!”
― Patrick Hamilton, The Slaves of Solitude

“Over and above this, however, she found that half of her honestly desired to stay. As well as the courage, she lacked the pure inclination to go which she had felt a few moments ago. A new sensation had replaced it. A permeating coma, a warm haze of noises and conversation, wrapped her comfortably around – together with something more. What that something more was she did not quite know. She sat there and let it flow through her. It was a glow, and a kind of premonition. It was certainly a spiritual, but much more emphatically a physical, premonition of good about to befall. It was like the effect on the body of good news, without the good news – a delicious short cut to that inconstant elation which was so arduously won by virtue from the everyday world. It engendered the desire to celebrate nothing for no reason.

She asked herself whether this was intoxication. She decided that at any rate it was a foretaste of it, and in a flash understood what had been a closed book to her until now – the temptations and perils of alcohol. She decided that she was growing up – that yet another of the veiled mysteries of the world had been illuminated by experience. Experience – that was the thing. Sitting there, she exulted in experience.Over and above this, however, she found that half of her honestly desired to stay. As well as the courage, she lacked the pure inclination to go which she had felt a few moments ago. A new sensation had replaced it. A permeating coma, a warm haze of noises and conversation, wrapped her comfortably around – together with something more. What that something more was she did not quite know. She sat there and let it flow through her. It was a glow, and a kind of premonition. It was certainly a spiritual, but much more emphatically a physical, premonition of good about to befall. It was like the effect on the body of good news, without the good news – a delicious short cut to that inconstant elation which was so arduously won by virtue from the everyday world. It engendered the desire to celebrate nothing for no reason.

She asked herself whether this was intoxication. She decided that at any rate it was a foretaste of it, and in a flash understood what had been a closed book to her until now – the temptations and perils of alcohol. She decided that she was growing up – that yet another of the veiled mysteries of the world had been illuminated by experience. Experience – that was the thing. Sitting there, she exulted in experience.”
― Patrick Hamilton, Twenty Thousand Streets Under the Sky

“It’s not my medicine. I’ve taken my medicine religiously—haven’t I taken it religiously ? Much as I detest it! It’s more than medicine that I want. It’s the medicine of a sweet, sane mind, of interest in something. Don’t you see what I mean?”
― Patrick Hamilton, Gas Light

“She was, she saw, always having thoughts for which she rebuked herself. It then flashed across her mind that the thoughts for which she rebuked herself seldom turned out to be other than shrewd and fruitful thoughts: and she rebuked herself for this as well.”
― Patrick Hamilton, The Slaves of Solitude