Alan Melville > Quotes

“I'm taking a revolver to Thrackley. You never know with blokes like Carson. A bit potty, but otherwise quite harmless. and I hate these harmless, potty people. They're always up to something.”
― Alan Melville, Weekend at Thrackley

“She stretched her fat arms heavenward and disappeared for quite a while in the folds of her black evening gown; when she emerged again she was rather redder in the face and just slightly out of breath. These modern dresses were the very devil to get in and out of if one didn't have a modern figure to match.”
― Alan Melville, Weekend at Thrackley

“If to-night turns out to be absolutely mouldy, have you any objection to receiving a sudden call from a sick aunt in town?"

"If you only knew the number of aunts I left on their death-beds."

"And spending the weekend with me at my flat , and having a nice little dinner at the club, and paying a return visit to Raoul at the Alhambra, and--"

"There are times," said Jim, "when I'm convinced that you were given some sort of brain after all.”
― Alan Melville, Weekend at Thrackley

“Good-bye, dearie," said Mrs. Bertram. "Take care of yourself, now." (For if half of what you read in the papers were true, you never could tell with these house-parties.)”
― Alan Melville, Weekend at Thrackley

“...Freddie Usher and I went to the same school, which can usually be trotted out as an excuse for pinching another man's automobile.”
― Alan Melville, Weekend at Thrackley

“They were hidden by steel-rimmed spectacles, the lenses of which were so thick and so powerful that they made the eyes behind them almost invisible. Somehow one felt, rather than saw, the eyes of Edwin Carson. Jacobson [the butler] always felt at a cruel disadvantage when talking to him: like a mouse being watched by a cat in the dark, unable to see the thing that was staring at it, conscious all the time that every movement was being watched.”
― Alan Melville, Weekend at Thrackley

“...Jacobson, as all good butlers should do when their masters make remarks which they do not quite understand, shrugged his shoulders and closed the door softly behind him.”
― Alan Melville, Weekend at Thrackley

“On Christmas Day and Easter Monday and other paperless occasions Mrs. Bertram pined in agony from the lack of news. Breakfast served neat without a spot of morning scandal seemed a futile affair altogether.”
― Alan Melville

“Over its early-evening pint of ale, Adderly decided that the new occupant of Thrackley was a lunatic. Or an invalid. Or a nervous wreck. Or (a little later in the evening, in a flight of imagination just before closing-time) the head of a powerful gang of counterfeiters.”
― Alan Melville

“Pleasant and extremely good-looking young man, aged thirty-four, possessing no talents or accomplishments beyond being able to give an imitation of Gracie Fields giving an imitation of Galle-Curi, with no relations and practically no money, seeks job." He told himself that the subject was much too far away from the verb to make the thing at all pleasant to the ear, and then proceeded to open his morning's mail.”
― Alan Melville, Weekend at Thrackley

“It surprised Jim to come across a surfeit of ugliness at once; he remembered a certain evening in Paris when on leave during the war when, at a quarter to twelve, he had seen definitely the Most Beautiful Girl in the World (a blonde) and a little later, at half-pas one or so, he had come face to face with positively the Most Beautiful Girl in the World (but this time a brunette). It had always seemed to him bad staff management that the two could not have been spread out over at least a couple of evenings.”
― Alan Melville

“No other person in the world laughed quite like Freddie Usher. Mercifully so....There were no half-hearted methods adopted when Freddie Usher became amused. No discreetness. No lack of abandon. No thought for the eardrums of those in the next street but two.”
― Alan Melville, Weekend at Thrackley

“Edwin Carson is the greatest living authority on precious stones in the world. The only reason why he isn't acclaimed as such in public and in the Press is that his methods of collecting his jewels--he's got an amazing collection, I believe--is not supposed to be all that it might be.”
― Alan Melville, Weekend at Thrackley