Quotes By Author: helen simonson

“You are not the first man to miss a woman’s more subtle communication. They think they are waving when we see only the calm sea, and pretty soon everybody drowns.”

“I have produced no children of my own and my husband is dead,” she replied, an acid tone in her voice. “Thus I am more to be pitied than revered. I am expected to give up the shop to my nephew, who will then be able to afford to bring a very good wife from Pakistan. In exchange, I will be given houseroom and no doubt, the honor of taking care of several small children of other family members.”The Major was silent. He was at once appalled and also reluctant to hear any more. This was why people usually talked about the weather.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

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