Best 20 quotes of Alice Thomas Ellis on MyQuotes

Adolescence is usually typified by an unanswerable combination of innocence and insolence.

Claudia's the sort of girl who goes through life holding onto the sides.

Death is the last enemy: once we've got past that I think everything will be alright.

Evil and laughter cannot co-exist.

I have frequently thought that the dead should be buried with all their belongings. It seems weirdly perverse that their clothes should still be here when the people you love best in the world have gone.

I have never had much trouble simultaneously entertaining diametrically opposed propositions, and welcome the possibility that this is not because I have one mind and am out of it, but because I have lots of them, all beavering away on their own.

I think the meaning of the universe is bound up with the egg. ... I am fed up with the meaning of the universe. Everything starts in the egg and ends in death. I think it's called 'the heartbreak at the heart of things.' But then perhaps our very mortality is an egg and at the moment of death our souls will emerge like damp chicks.

It's when most of the guests have gone that the party really gets interesting - peering under the table and into the bath to see who's stayed and what shape they're in. It is then that those who are still conscious divulge things you had not known before: sometimes about themselves, sometimes about other people and sometimes about you. It does not necessarily make pleasant hearing but it is always fascinating. In the relaxed atmosphere, in the wake of the hubbub, they unwind and grow confidential - nay, indiscreet. If they are not already, they end up as your closest friends.

One can get very fond of the people one meets in bars. The trouble is they then appear sort of different in the daylight and you realize that taking them with you is rather like taking a goldfish for a walk: not entirely correct, and surprising for the next people you run into.

Optimism is the last resort of those in deep despair. There can't be any optimists in heaven.

Our only hope rests on the off-chance that God does exist.

Phrase books seem to be a universal and eternal source of hilarity and I think I know why. Their authors go mad in the course of compiling them.

There is a hint of despair in the cry of 'I told you so,' an element of disappointment in the apparent satisfaction when idols turn out to have clay feet. The human race, when it thinks it has proved that no one is superior, is partly gratified and partly depressed.

There seems to be a peculiar and particular tie between men who have been drunk together.

The snag in being married to a person who knows more or less everything is that one gets hopelessly lazy. ... I never look things up in books because all I need to do is ask him, and when he gives me the answers I don't properly commit them to memory because I know if I forget all I have to do is to ask him again. It is rather like keeping one's brain in a suitcase.

when a person implores you to be reasonable what he means is that you should speed round forthwith to his point of view.

They shared an image of the American Christmas--riches, reconciliations, tears, snow, success, sentiment, furs and firs, the shop windows shining like Heaven and everything good for sale.

. . to cook well and with imagination you have to be in a cheerful and contented frame of mind, and thus inclined to be generous.

Well, I think adultery is a filthy habit,' said Rose, 'like using someone else's toothbrush.

When a baronet is discovered behind a bush in the park with a guardsman, or a minister of the crown is caught creeping out of a country with his socks stuffed full of bank notes and a woman not his wife ten paces behind, or a public person is revealed disporting himself with a couple of tarts and a teddy bear in West Paddington, they complain to the press that the outcry is hypocritical and that everyone would like to do what they were doing if only they had the chance. They regard the law as an instrument of envy, like nationalization and death duties.