Honeycomb quotes

The moist air was rich with the smell of trees—wet bark and branches—moss and lichen, damp dead leaves. She stood on the dark platform snuffing the rich air. It was the end of her journey.

Anything that might follow would be unreal compared to that moment.

Little bulbs of yellow light further up the platform told her where she must turn to find the things she must go to meet. “How lovely the air is here.”

Stokes and Wiggerson were fluttering in and out of the rooms carrying frilled bed-linen, lace-edged towels and flowered bedspreads.

People with money could make the spring come as soon as the days lengthened.

Clear bright rooms, bright clean paint, soft coloured hangings, spring flowers in the bright light on landings. The warmth from stoves and fires seemed as if it came from the sun. Its glow changed suddenly to the glow of sunlight.

But she would be excited and interested too, and would think about it a little. If only she could make Eve see what a book was … a dance by the author, a song, a prayer, an important sermon, a message.

Books were not stories printed on paper, they were people; the real people;

… “I prefer books to people” … “I know now why I prefer books to people.”

Masculine worldliness meant never being really there; always talking about things that had happened or making plans for things that might happen. There was nothing that could happen that was not in some way the same as anything else.

Nobody was ever quite there, realising.

pretending to be interested when he stopped.

That was feminine worldliness, pretending to be interested so that pleasant things might go on.

Masculine worldliness was refusing to be interested so that it might go on doing things. Feminine worldliness then meant perpetual hard work and cheating and pretence at the door of a hidden garden, a lovely hidden garden. Masculine worldliness meant never being really there;

pretending to be interested when he stopped. That was feminine worldliness, pretending to be interested so that pleasant things might go on.

Masculine worldliness was refusing to be interested so that it might go on doing things.

Feminine worldliness then meant perpetual hard work and cheating and pretence at the door of a hidden garden, a lovely hidden garden. Masculine worldliness meant never being really there; always talking about things that had happened or making plans for things that might happen.

How ignorant the man was who said, “each fair mask for what it shows itself.”

Life is not a mask, it is fair; the gold in one’s hair is real.

Friday brought an atmosphere of expectation. Mr. Kronen, an old friend of the Corries, was coming down, with a new Mrs. Kronen.

… protecting her and keeping people off, and she would sing all day in the garden and the house and play to him and read sometimes aloud, and he would forget he was old and ill, and they would share the great secret, dying of happiness.

Die of happiness. People ought to be able to die of happiness if they were able to admit how happy they were.

If they admitted it aloud they would pass straight out of their bodies, alive; unhappiness was the same as death, not suffering; but letting suffering make you unhappy—curse God and die, curse life, that was letting life beat you; letting God beat you.

The little dignified high-built cut-through street, with its sudden walled-in church, swept round and opened into brightness and a clamour of central sounds ringing harshly up into the sky.

The pavement of heaven.

To walk along the radiant pavement of sunlit Regent Street forever.

… attempting to judge and condemn the roomful of quiet players, shouting aloud to her that she was a fool to be drawn in to talking to men seriously on their own level, a fool to parade about as if she really enjoyed their silly game.

“I hate women and they’ve got to know it,”

she retorted with all her strength, hitting blindly out towards the sofa, feeling all the contrivances of toilet and coiffure fall in meaningless horrible detail under her blows.

Just a cold blank hating forehead and neatly brushed hair above it. If a man doesn’t understand or doesn’t agree he’s just a blank bony conceitedly thinking, absolutely condemning forehead, a face below, going on eating—and going off somewhere.

Men are all hard angry bones; always thinking something, only one thing at a time and unless that is agreed to, they murder.

My husband shan’t kill me. … I’ll shatter his conceited brow—make him see … two sides to every question … a million sides … no questions, only sides … always changing. Men argue, think they prove things; their foreheads recover—cool and calm.

Pause. “It sounds,” thought Miriam, “as if he were reading from the Book of Judgment. It isn’t true either.

Perhaps a judgment can never be true.

” She pondered to the singing of her blood.

The Kingdom of Heaven is within you. But even Christ went about sad, trying to get people to do some sort of trick that He said was necessary before they could find God—something to do with Himself. There was something wrong about that.

If one were perfectly still, the sense of God was there.

Supposing everyone could be got to stay perfectly still, until they died … like that woman in the book who was dying so happily of starvation … and then the friend came fussing in with soup. …

Supposing everyone could be got to stay perfectly still, until they died … like that woman in the book who was dying so happily of starvation … and then the friend came fussing in with soup. …

Things were astounding enough; enough to make you die of astonishment, if you did nothing at all.

Being alive. If one could realise that clearly enough, one would die.

Things were astounding enough; enough to make you die of astonishment, if you did nothing at all. Being alive. If one could realise that clearly enough, one would die.

Everything everyone did was just a distraction from astonishment.

It could only be done in a convent. … It cost money to get into a convent, except as a servant. If you were a servant you could not stay day and night in your cell—watching the light and darkness until you died.

…” Some person had said that. … Perhaps men would turn round one day and see, what they were like. Eve had not been unkind to the devil; only Adam and God.

All the men in the world, and their God, ought to apologise to women.

…

Miriam shouted convivially and retired into her crowded sunlit bathroom, turning on both bath taps so that she might sing aloud. Harriett had made the day strong … silver bright and clean and clear.

Harriett was like a clear blade.

She splashed into the cold water gasping and singing. Two o’clock—ages yet before the weddings. There was a smell of bacon frying. They would all have breakfast together. She could smile at Harriett.

how swift it all was. … Sarah and Harriett, rescued from poverty and fear … mother’s wedding on a May morning long ago … in the little village church … to walk out of church into the open country; in the morning; a bride.

There were no brides in London.

Now to fall in behind Eve and Mr. Tremayne. Mr. Grove walked clumsily. His arm brushed against the shower bouquet.

There were so many things to take you away from people.

In the suburbs people were everything, and there was nothing in them.

They did not understand anything; but going on. They were helpless and without thoughts; amongst their furniture. They did not even have busts of Beethoven.

It was—Style … or something. Le style c’est l’homme. That meant something. It was the same with clothes. …

Suburban people could be fashionable, never stylish.

And manners. … They were fussily kind and nice to each other; as if life were pitiful … life … pitiful. They all pitied, and despised each other.

The others exclaimed. They were all in agreement … “a young woman with a baritone voice” … a frog, white, keeping alive in coal for hundreds of years … my cousin has crossed the Atlantic six times. …

Nothing of any kind would ever stop them. They would never wait to know they were alive.

They were mad. They would die mad. Of diseases with names. Even Miss Meldrum did not quite know. When she talked she was as mad as they were.

Her gold-flecked brown eyes that commonly laughed at everything, except the problem of free will, and refused questions, had as much sorrow and certainty as she had herself. She and Lilla were one person, the same person.

Deep down in everyone was sorrow and certainty.

A faint resentment filled her. She turned away to go down into the garden. The scene slid into the large music-room. It was full of seated forms. Lilla was at the piano, her foot on the low pedal, her hands raised for a crashing chord.