Best 19 quotes of Helen Dewitt on MyQuotes

I didn't want to go to sleep knowing I would just wake up in the morning.

If you don’t like a language, you can go write your own.

I once read somewhere that Sean Connery left school at the age of 13 and later went on to read Proust and Finnegans Wake and I keep expecting to meet an enthusiastic school leaver on the train, the type of person who only ever reads something because it is marvellous (and so hated school). Unfortunately the enthusiastic school leavers are all minding their own business.

Perhaps this is the root of all evil, that gardeners are not put in charge of our schools.

The master swordsman isn't interested in killing people. He only wants to perfect his art.

There are people who think contraception is immoral because the object of copulation is procreation. In a similar way there are people who think the only reason to read a book is to write a book.

There are people who think death a fate worse than boredom.

There is a strange taboo in our society against ending something merely because it is not pleasant-- life, love, a conversation, you name it, the etiquette is that you must begin in ignorance & persevere in the face of knowledge, & though I naturally believe that this is profoundly wrong it's not nice to go around constantly offending people.

The typical review makes a Teletubby look like a sabre-toothed tiger. You can economize by reading online rather than squandering $4.95, yes, but all you get is people pusillanimously Favoriting and Liking and Friending. Why is there no Hate button? Why?

The writer who is literally an addict, the writer who can't help himself, the writer who HAS to write, can never be anything but an amateur, because the industry requires the professional to put writing on hold not just for a day or two, or a week, but for years.

[...] and unfortunately most women did not seem to have the same urges. Or if they did, they wouldn't admit it. They probably didn't, anyway. But if they did they wouldn't admit it.

Brian starts telling stories about Derrida: perfectly happy, it seems, to accept all the privileges of the author. Theories of authorial absence, says Brian, tend to leave out the curious circumstance that the author is always there to pick up his cheque.

But if you are going to do something properly you have to plan ahead or you will end up cutting the moment wrong. Then events will be all wrinkled and puckered.

Reflected, framed, the room had charms foreign to the original, just as an ordinary or even ugly object gains beauty and dignity when painted or photographed.

So Lucille pressed the button, and a panel slid open in the wall, and the transporter came through, and sure enough here was the bare butt of the client waiting to be whipped. For reasons best known to himself he had kept his shoes and socks on, so he was wearing well-polished black loafers and black silk socks.

The reason is that even in a fantasy there is nothing even remotely erotic about a toilet bowl. In fact, considered as an accoutrement to a sexual encounter, a toilet bowl is a real cold shower.

There were all these conservative colors that you don't see any more, this navy blue, navy blue is the hardest color to match so it dates really obviously because the idea people have in their head of a dark neutral blue changes over the years, people in the fashion industry, the way they perceive a dark blue is affected by the other colors they are working with at the time.

When a human being develops an argument, when a human being attempts not only to think but to speak with precision, he or she is often made to feel that this is a mark of social inadequacy and that there is something comical about it. The younger the human being, the more humorous it becomes. So that humans whose inclination it is to think and speak in this way become self-conscious from an early age, and a kind of minstrelisation creeps in.

Why is it, do you suppose," said Edward, "that the Continental breakfast has only to cross the Channel to be so damp and depressing. It seems simple enough; why does it travel so badly? In England one wonders whether it is really meant to be eaten. Here it is invariably ambrosial." "It is the tyranny of the toast rack," said Maria.