52 Quotes by Dorothy Gilman

That’s what terrorism is, basically – pure theater. Nothing in particular is ever accomplished by it, other than to focus attention on a small group of people who seize absolute power by threatening everything that holds civilization together.

It wasn’t that she had so much character, thought Mrs. Pollifax, but rather that always in her life she had found it difficult to submit. The list of her small rebellions was endless. Surely there was room for one more?

Hell is more like boredom, or not having enough to do, and too much time to contemplate one’s deficiencies.

Do you like Magda too?” His gaze left the gate to sweep the courtyard. “She seems pleasant enough when she’s not drugged. But then she nearly always is, isn’t she?” He.

Everything matters terribly to children, you know, they’re fresh and unformed...

But this was exactly the age, she thought, when life ought to be spent, not hoarded. There had been enough years of comfortable living, and complacency was nothing but delusion. One could not always change the world, she felt, but one could change oneself.

I mean, have you ever stopped to realize – not just the miracle that life is – but how basically comic it is despite its griefs? The wonder of it, as Amman Singh says, is that we take it so seriously. One day, poised on my tightrope, I hope to manage a glorious cartwheel, or at the very least a pirouette.