Sybille Bedford Quotes

• One does odd things. You see, when one's young one doesn't feel part of it yet, the human condition; one does things because they are not “for good”; one thinks everything is a rehearsal - to be repeated ad lib, to be put right when the curtain goes up in earnest. One day you know that the curtain was up all the time. That was the performance.

  Sybille Bedford

  Thinking, One Day, Rehearsal

  18 Copy quote

• In Europe, where human relations like clothes are supposed to last, one's got to be wearable. In France one has to be interesting, in Italy pleasant, in England one has to fit.

  Sybille Bedford

  Travel, Europe, Clothes

  Sybille Bedford (1986). “A Visit to Don Otavio: A Mexican Journey”, Plume Books

  6 Copy quote

• A part, a large part, of traveling is an engagement of the ego v. the world. The world is hydra headed, as old as the rocks and as changing as the sea, enmeshed inextricably in its ways. The ego wants to arrive at places safely and on time.

  Sybille Bedford

  Rocks, Sea, Ego

  Sybille Bedford (1990). “As it was: pleasures, landscapes and justice”, Trafalgar Square

  56 Copy quote

• All wealth is relative; and so is its absence.

  Sybille Bedford

  Wealth, Absence, Relative

  Sybille Bedford (2016). “A Visit to Don Otavio: A Mexican Journey”, p.81, New York Review of Books

  4 Copy quote

• The future of human society. Had it made an irrevocably false start? The compass error that gets harder to correct with every mile you go?

  Sybille Bedford

  Errors, Society, Compass

  Sybille Bedford (2017). “A Favourite of the Gods and A Compass Error”, p.280, New York Review of Books

  4 Copy quote

• I write because I'm a writer. It is rather like cooking: to make something out of the raw material at hand.

  Sybille Bedford

  Writing, Hands, Cooking

  4 Copy quote

• public opinion, the sum of private opinions, does matter, can matter often for good.

  Sybille Bedford

  Public Opinion, Doe, Matter

  Sybille Bedford (2017). “A Favourite of the Gods and A Compass Error”, p.280, New York Review of Books

  5 Copy quote

• All food is the gift of the gods and has something of the miraculous, the egg no less than the truffle.

  Sybille Bedford

  Food, Eggs, Truffles

  7 Copy quote

• I detest . . . anything over-cooked, over-herbed, over-sauced, over elaborate. Nothing can go very far wrong at table as long as there is honest bread, butter, olive oil, a generous spirit, lively appetites and attention to what we are eating.

  Sybille Bedford

  Honesty, Generous Spirit, Oil

  4 Copy quote

• It would seem that in history it's never a tooth for a tooth, but a thousand, a hundred thousand for one.

  Sybille Bedford

  Revenge, War, Teeth

  Sybille Bedford (2017). “A Favourite of the Gods and A Compass Error”, p.143, New York Review of Books

  4 Copy quote

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