People don't alter. They may with enormous difficulty modify themselves, but they never really change. Margery Allingham More Quotes by Margery Allingham More Quotes From Margery Allingham Mourning is not forgetting... It is an undoing. Every minute tie has to be untied and something permanent and valuable recovered and assimilated from the dust. Margery Allingham sad dust ties Good doctors get a mechanic's pleasure in making you tick over. Margery Allingham tick doctors pleasure The nicest people fall in love indiscriminately ... while under the influence of that pre-eminently selfish lunacy they may make the most outrageous demands upon their friends with no other excuse than their painful need. Margery Allingham selfish falling-in-love people Love so seldom means happiness. Margery Allingham mean Infatuation is one of those slightly comic illnesses which are at once so undignified and so painful that a nice-minded world does its best to ignore their existence altogether, referring to them only under provocation and then with apology, but, like its more material brother, this boil on the neck of the spirit can hardly be forgotten either by the sufferer or anyone else in his vicinity. The malady is ludicrous, sad, excruciating and, above all, instantly diagnosable. Margery Allingham apology nice brother I write every paragraph four times - once to get my meaning down, once to put in anything I have left out, once to take out anything that seems unnecessary, and once to make the whole thing sound as if I had only just thought of it. Margery Allingham four sound writing If one cannot command attention by one's admirable qualities one can at least be a nuisance Margery Allingham nuisance quality attention Waiting is one of the great arts. Margery Allingham self-control waiting art Outrage, combining as it does shock, anger, reproach, and helplessness, is perhaps the most unmanageable, the most demoralizing of all the emotions. Margery Allingham anger emotion doe But there are roughly two sorts of informed people, aren't there? People who start off right by observing the pitfalls and mistakes and going round them, and the people who fall into them and get out and know they're there because of that. They both come to the same conclusions but they don't have quite the same point of view. Margery Allingham views mistake fall I believe that an author who cannot control her characters is, like a mother who cannot control her children, not really fit to look after them. Margery Allingham mother believe children Of all the band of personal traitors the sense of humor is the most dangerous. Margery Allingham traitor band humor One policeman may be a friend, but two are the Law. Margery Allingham law may two There are only two kinds of men who become dentists. The ones who love it and ones who get miserable. Think round and you'll see I'm right. Margery Allingham men two thinking There are, fortunately, very few people who can say that they have actually attended a murder. Margery Allingham murder people When Mr. William Faraday sat down to write his memoirs after fifty-eight years of blameless inactivity he found the work of inscribing the history of his life almost as tedious as living it had been, and so, possessing a natural invention coupled with a gift for locating the easier path, he began to prevaricate a little upon the second page, working his way up to downright lying on the sixth and subsequent folios. Margery Allingham eight writing lying I am one of those people who are blessed, or cursed, with a nature which has to interfere. If I see a thing that needs doing I do it Margery Allingham nature blessed people It is always difficult to escape from youth; its hopefulness, its optimistic belief in the privileges of desire, its despair, and its sense of outrage and injustice at disappointment, all these spring on a man inflicting indelicate agony when he is no longer prepared. Margery Allingham optimistic disappointment spring When the habitually even-tempered suddenly fly into a passion, that explosion is apt to be more impressive than the outburst of the most violent amongst us. Margery Allingham violent passion inspirational the old fellow seemed to spot deceit as if it reeked like a goat. Margery Allingham goats deceit deception
