75 Quotes by Penelope Fitzgerald

Opening the shop gave her, every morning, the same feeling of promise and opportunity. The books stood as neatly ranged as Gipping’s vegetables, ready for all comers.

I have read Lolita, as you requested. It is a good book, and therefore you should try to sell it to the inhabitants of Hardborough. They won’t understand it, but that is all to the good. Understanding makes the mind lazy.

Florence had noticed one or two eccentricities in herself lately, which might be the result of hard work, or of age, or of living alone. When the letters came, for example, she often found herself wasting time in looking at the postmarks and wondering whoever they could be from, instead of opening them in a sensible manner and finding out at once.

Algebra, like laudanum, deadens pain, Fritz wrote.

There isn’t one kind of happiness, there’s all kinds. Decision is torment for anyone with imagination. When you decide, you multiply the things you might have done and now never can.

Experiences aren’t given to us to be ‘got over,’ otherwise they would hardly be experiences.

If they don’t depend on true evidence, scientists are no better than gossips.

It was defeat, but defeat is less unwelcome when you are tired.

But time given to wishing for what can’t be is not only spent, but wasted, and for all that we waste we shall be accountable.