Margaret Millar > Quotes

“Some people become so expert at reading between the lines
they don't read the lines.”
― Margaret Millar, An Air That Kills

“Animosity hung between them like a two-edged sword; neither of them could use it without first getting hurt herself.”
― Margaret Millar, Beast In View

“Some people become so expert at reading between the lines they don't read the lines.”
― Margaret Millar

“The rest of us have monsters too, but we must call them by other names, or pretend they don't exist...”
― Margaret Millar, Beyond This Point Are Monsters

“The world of maps is nice and flat and simple. It has areas for people and areas for monsters. What a shock it is to discover the world is round and the areas merge and nothing separates the monsters and ourselves; that we are all whirling around in space together and there isn't even a graceful way of falling off.”
― Margaret Millar, Beyond This Point Are Monsters

“You have a low opinion of yourself, Helen."
"I wasn't born with it."
"Where did you get it?"
'The story" she said, "is too long to tell, and too dull to listen to.”
― Margaret Millar, Beast In View

“The sidewalks swarmed with people, the night was full of the noises of the living. They struck Miss Clarvoe's ears strangely, like sounds from another planet.”
― Margaret Millar, Beast In View

“The desk clerk, whose name plate identified him as G. O. Horner, was a thin elderly man with protuberant eyes that gave him an expression of intense interest and curiosity. The expression was false. After thirty years in the business, people meant no more to him than individual bees do to a beekeeper. Their differences were lost in a welter of statistics, eradicated by sheer weight of numbers. They came and went, ate, drank, were happy, sad, thin, fat, stole towels and left behind toothbrushes, books, girdles, jewelry, burned holes in the furniture, slipped in bathtubs, jumped out windows. They were all alive. swarming around the hive, and Mr. Horner wore a protective net of indifference over his head and shoulders.”
― Margaret Millar, Beast In View

“The two women looked at each other as if through the periscopes of enemy submarines across a fathomless and crawling sea.”
― Margaret Millar, Vanish in an Instant

“Mr. Van Eyck had a great deal of money which he didn’t want to spend, and a great deal of time which he didn’t know how to spend.”
― Margaret Millar, The Murder of Miranda

“I should retire altogether -- but what will I do with the days and what will they do to me?”
― Margaret Millar, Beast In View

“It didn’t even seem ironic to him that he should be planning remarks about truth and justice when, in fact, his whole life had been a marathon race, with truth a few jumps ahead of him and justice a few jumps behind. He had never caught up with the one, and the other had never caught up with him.”
― Margaret Millar, A Stranger In My Grave

“Once in a while Blackshear was invited out to the house for dinner, and on these occasions the conversation was conducted by Verna Clarvoe, who would chatter endlessly on the I-me-my level.”
― Margaret Millar, Beast In View

“They were dark, despairing eyes that had experienced too much and interpreted too little.”
― Margaret Millar, Beast In View

“You wouldn't want to be absolutely unique, would you. like a three-headed calf or something ?"

"Of course not." I would, she thought violently. I want to be absolutely unique.

"I'm sorry if I offended you," he said with a trace of a smile. "It's just that I knew a three-headed calf once. and all it ever wanted to be was ordinary.”
― Margaret Millar, Vanish in an Instant

“Nothing was new anymore. Summer had passed. The winter of boredom had set in and frost had formed in the crevices of Blackshear's mind.”
― Margaret Millar, Beast In View

“Nothing was new anymore. Summer had passed, The winter of boredom had set in and frost had formed in the crevices of Blackshear's mind.”
― Margaret Millar, Beast In View

“Yes, you are. You’re Helen and I don’t want you to be anybody else. I like you exactly as you are. Other people will, too, if you’ll let them. They’ll like you just as you are, just for yourself alone, Helen.”
― Margaret Millar, Beast In View

“It was a street of conformity; where identical houses were painted at the same time every spring, a place of rules where gardens, parenthood and the future were planned with equal care, and even if everything went wrong the master plan remained in effect–keep up appearances, clip the hedges, mow the lawn, so that no one will suspect that there’s a third mortgage and that Mother’s headaches are caused by martinis not migraine.”
― Margaret Millar, Listening Walls

“The silence stretched out like tape from a roller until there seemed no logical place to cut it”
― Margaret Millar, Beast In View

“[T]he brisk sea wind cooled his passions and neutralized the acid in his mind.”
― Margaret Millar, Beast In View

“Non sentì dolore, fu solo sorpresa nel vedere come era bello il sangue. Bello come una collana di rubini che nessun filo avrebbe potuto trattenere.”
― Margaret Millar, Beast In View