Rumer Godden Quotes

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There is an Indian proverb that says that everyone is a house with four rooms, a physical, a mental, an emtional, and a spiritual . Most of us tend to live in one room most of the time but unless we go into every room every day, even if only to keep it aired, we are not a complete person.

Rumer Godden

Spiritual, Emotional, People

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When you learn to read you will be born again...and you will never be quite so alone again.

Rumer Godden

Reading, Literacy, Born Again

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I don't know if I believe in God, but I know I believe in the devil. I have met him.

Rumer Godden

Believe, Devil, Mets

Rumer Godden (1979). “Five For Sorrow, Ten For Joy”

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Memory is the only friend of grief.

Rumer Godden

Memories, Grief

Rumer Godden (1984). “China Court”

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Wanting is the beginning of getting.

Rumer Godden

Desire

Rumer Godden (2016). “An Episode of Sparrows”, p.107, New York Review of Books

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A garden isn't meant to be useful. It's for joy.

Rumer Godden

Gratitude, Cheer, Garden

Rumer Godden (1984). “China Court”

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A writer who has never explored words, who has never searched, seeded, sieved, sifted through his knowledge and memory...dictiona ries, thesaurus, poems, favorite paragraphs, to find the right word, is like someone owning a gold mine who has never mined it.

Rumer Godden

Memories, Gold, Thesaurus

12 Copy quote
With everything that happens to you, with everyone you meet who is important to you, you either die a little or are born.

Rumer Godden

Important, Littles, Born

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It is an anxious, sometimes a dangerous thing to be a doll. Dolls cannot choose; they can only be chosen; they cannot 'do'; they can only be done by.

Rumer Godden

Dolls, Done, Sometimes

Rumer Godden (2015). “The Dolls' House”, p.9, Pan Macmillan

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In good company your thoughts run, in solitude your thought is still ... In talk your mind can be stretched, widened, exhilarated to heights, but it cannot be deepened; you have to deepen it yourself.

Rumer Godden

Running, Thinking, Solitude

Rumer Godden (1961). “Rungli-Rungliot means in Paharia, Thus far and no further”

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Most grown people are like icebergs, three-tenths showing, seven-tenths submerged - that is why a collision with one of them is unexpectedly hurtful.

Rumer Godden

People, Hurtful, Three

Rumer Godden (2011). “The Greengage Summer”, p.8, Pan Macmillan

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Once you have felt the Indian dust, you will never be free of it.

Rumer Godden

Dust, Felt, Indian

Rumer Godden (2011). “The Peacock Spring”, p.31, Pan Macmillan

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Drink very good tea out of a thin Wocester cup of colour between apricot and pink.

Rumer Godden

Tea, Apricots, Cups

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As one gets older being sad and miserable can become a bit of a habit. To counteract this, she suggests making a point of savoring such things as the tastiness of a piece of fruit, or other small things we might have been prone to overlook during our younger, busier days.

Rumer Godden

Being Sad, Age, Pieces

7 Copy quote
If books were Persian carpets, one would not look only at the outer side. because it is the stitch that makes a carpet wear, gives it its life and bloom.

Rumer Godden

Book, Two Sides, Giving

25 Copy quote
Every piece of writing starts from what I call a grit a sight or sound, a sentence or happening that does not pass away but quite inexplicably lodges in the mind.

Rumer Godden

Writing, Sight, Mind

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You can be a nuisance to your family. You mustn't be a nuisance to your friends.

Rumer Godden

Family, Friends, Nuisance

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To me and my kind life itself is a story and we have to tell it in stories - that is the way it falls.

Rumer Godden

Fall, Stories, Way

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if you think you know, you don't ask questions, or if you ask, you don't listen to the answers. Everyone, everything, each thing, is different, so that it isn't safe to know. You - you have to grope.

Rumer Godden

Thinking, Curiosity, Different

Rumer Godden (1963). “The Battle of the Villa Fiorita. The Greengage Summer. An Episode of Sparrows”

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I suppose the more you have to do, the more you learn to organize and concentrate-or else get fragmented into bits. I have learned to use my 'ten minutes'. I once thought it was not worth sitting down for a time as short as that; now I know differently and, if I have ten minutes, I use them, even if they bring only two lines, and it keeps the book alive.

Rumer Godden

Happiness, Book, Two

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Of course one never knows in draft if it's going to turn out, even with my age and experience.

Rumer Godden

Age, Turns, Courses

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To wake for the first time in a new place can be like another birth.

Rumer Godden

Firsts, Birth, First Time

Rumer Godden (2011). “The Greengage Summer”, p.12, Pan Macmillan

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It's only by being obstinate that anything is got, or done.

Rumer Godden

Done, Stubbornness, Obstinate

RUMER GODDEN (1961). “China Court”

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For an author nothing is as dead as a book once it is written.

Rumer Godden

Book, Written

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You must remember garden catalogues are as big liars as house-agents.

Rumer Godden

Liars, Garden, House

Rumer Godden (1984). “China Court”

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Rumer Godden

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Born: December 10, 1907
Died: November 8, 1998
Occupation: Author
Cite this Page: Citation

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