Enid Bagnold
In marriage there are no manners to keep up, and beneath the wildest accusations no real criticism. Each is familiar with that ancient child in the other who may erupt again. We are not ridiculous to ourselves. We are ageless. That is the luxury of the wedding ring.Collection: Wedding
A father is always making his baby into a little woman. And when she is a woman he turns her back again.Collection: Dad
When a man goes through six years training to be a doctor he will never be the same. He knows too much.Collection: Medical
If a dog doesn't put you first where are you both? In what relation? A dog needs God. It lives by your glances, your wishes. It even shares your humor. This happens about the fifth year. If it doesn't happen you are only keeping an animal.Collection: Humor
As for death one gets used to it, even if it's only other people's death you get used to.
The pleasure of one's effect on other people still exists in age - what's called making a hit. But the hit is much rarer and made of different stuff.
Judges don't age; time decorates them.
The theatre is a gross art, built in sweeps and over-emphasis. Compromise is its second name.
Who wants to become a writer? And why? Because it's the answer to everything. ... It's the streaming reason for living. To note, to pin down, to build up, to create, to be astonished at nothing, to cherish the oddities, to let nothing go down the drain, to make something, to make a great flower out of life, even if it's a cactus.Collection: Flower
I don't like people," said Velvet. "... I only like horses.Collection: Horse
Before you fall asleep everyday, say something positive to yourself.Collection: Fall
One can lie, but truth is more interesting.Collection: Truth
Why do birds sing in the morning? It's the triumphant shout: 'We got through another night!'Collection: Morning
You will be old-fashioned one day. It's more shocking than getting old.Collection: Age
As for death, one gets used to it, even if it is only other people is death you get used to.Collection: Death
It's not till sex has died out between a man and a woman that they can really love. And now I mean affection. Now I mean to be fond of (as one is fond of oneself) -to hope, to be disappointed, to live inside the other heart. When I look back on the pain of sex, the love like a wild fox so ready to bite, the antagonism that sits like a twin beside love, and contrast it with affection, so deeply unrepeatable, of two people who have lived a life together (and of whom one must die) it's the affection I find richer. It's that I would have again. Not all those doubtful rainbow colors.Collection: Love
I am not a born writer, but I was born a writer.Collection: Born
I shall continue to explore-the astonishment of living.Collection: Astonishment
After forty years of marriage we still stood with broken swords in our hands.Collection: Marriage
The dangerous thing about hate is that it seems so reasonable.Collection: Hate
An only child is never twelve.Collection: Children
From birth to death we are alone.Collection: Birth
Let this serve as an axiom to every lover: A woman who refuses lunch refuses everything.Collection: Lunch
Things come suitable to the time.Collection: Timing
The theatre is a gross art, built in sweeps and over-emphasis. Compromise is its second name.Collection: Art
Pity is exhaustible. What a terrible discovery!Collection: Discovery
It's not till sex has died out between a man and a woman that they can really love. And now I mean affection. Now I mean to be fond of (as one is fond of oneself) --to hope, to be disappointed, to live inside the other heart.Collection: Sex
Isn't the fear of pain next brother to pain itself?Collection: Brother
One's palate is reborn every morning!Collection: Morning
There may be wonder in money, but, dear God, there is money in wonder.Collection: Money
Judges don't age. Time decorates them.Collection: Funny
One never knows when one is old for certain.Collection: Age
The Press blew, the public stared, hands flew out like a million little fishes after bread.Collection: Hands
if death becomes cheap it is the watcher, not the dying, who is poisoned.Collection: Death
Sex -- the great inequality, the great miscalculator, the great Irritator.Collection: Sex
Marriage. The beginning and the end are wonderful. But the middle part is hell.Collection: Marriage
But I had been in love pretty often and I didn't think it stood the wear and tear.Collection: Thinking
Dead news like dead love has no phoenix in its ashes.Collection: Phoenix