Helen Simonson Quotes

...as I get older, I find myself insisting on my right to be philosophically sloppy.

~ Helen Simonson

We are all small-minded people, creeping about the earth grubbing for our own advantage and making the very mistakes for which we want to humiliate our neighbors.

~ Helen Simonson

The human race is all the same when it comes to romantic relations,' said the Major. 'A startling absence of impulse control combined with complete myopia.

~ Helen Simonson

He cursed himself for having assumed the weather would be sunny. Perhaps it was the result of evolution, he thought--some adaptive gene that allowed the English to go on making blithe outdoor plans in the face of almost certain rain.

~ Helen Simonson

He opened his mouth to say that she looked extremely beautiful and deserved armfuls of roses, but the words were lost in committee somewhere, shuffled aside by the parts of his head that worked full-time at avoiding ridicule.

~ Helen Simonson

...I tell myself it does not matter what one reads--favorite authors, particular themes--as long as we read something. It is not even important to own the books.

~ Helen Simonson

War does have a way of interfering with one's most closely held desires.

~ Helen Simonson

Most of all I remember that what begins with drums and fife, flags and bunting, becomes too swiftly a long and grey winter of the spirit.

~ Helen Simonson

My parents told me to marry for money,' said her husband. 'But I chose the love of a strong woman.''And look what trouble I turned out to be,' she said.

~ Helen Simonson

They sat a moment in embrace of silent mutual comfort, which was, she often thought, the reward of those long married.

~ Helen Simonson

You Anglo-Saxons have largely broken away from such dependence on family. Each generation feels perfectly free to act alone and you are not afraid.

~ Helen Simonson

But it's not enough to be in love. It's about how you spend your days, what you do together, who you choose as friends, and most of all it's what work you do ... Better to break both our hearts now than watch them wither away over time.

~ Helen Simonson

Despite his attempts to maintain a vigorous structure of errands, golf games, visits, and meetings, there were sometimes days like this one, filled with rain and touched with a gnawing sense of parts missing from life. When the slick mud ran in the flower beds and the clouds smothered the light, he missed his wife.

~ Helen Simonson

Her favourite summer memories were not of events themselves, of picnics, sea bathing, tennis afternoons and cricket matches, but of watching Hugh and Daniel enjoying them and locking into memory the delight in their faces and their open laughter.

~ Helen Simonson

Memories were like tomb paintings, thought the Major, the colors still vivid no matter how many layers of mud and sand time deposited. Scrape at them and they come up all red and blazing.

~ Helen Simonson

Look here, it's all very tidy and convenient to see the world in black and white,' said the Major, trying to soften his tone slightly. 'It's a particular passion of young men eager to sweep away their dusty elders.' He stopped to organize his thoughts into some statement short enough for a youthful attention span. 'However, philosophical rigidity is usually combined with a complete lack of education or real-world experience, and it is often augmented with strange haircuts and an aversion to bathing. Not in your case, of course—you are very neat.' Abdul Wahid looked confused, which was an improvement over the frown.'You are very strange,' he said. 'Are you saying it is wrong, stupid, to try to live a life of faith?''No, I think it is admirable,' said the Major. 'But I think a life of faith must start with remembering that humility is the first virtue before God.

~ Helen Simonson

Look, the truth belongs to the guy who's best at sticking to his story,' said Ferguson.

~ Helen Simonson

Only sometimes when we pick and choose among the rules we discover later that we have set aside something precious in the process.

~ Helen Simonson

He had never imagined so clearly the consequences of mailing a letter—the impossibility of retrieving it from the iron mouth of the box; the inevitability if its steady progress through the postal system; the passing from bag to bag and postman to postman until a lone man in a van pulls up to the door and pushes a small pile through the letterbox. It seemed suddenly horrible that one's words could not be taken back, one's thoughts allowed none of the remediation of speaking face to face.

~ Helen Simonson