16 Quotes by Sybille Bedford

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.

When one’s young, 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.

My interest in how people lived was nourished quite literally by the food I shared with them.

I have not the slightest desire to see the wonders of nature', said E.'Of course not my dear. But what else can we do?

Im my native country I successfully avoided seeing the Grand Canyon; I avoided the Painted Desert, my nurse did not manage to drag me to Niagara. With all respect to Alexander von Humboldt, I will not get myself off this contraption to look at a tree however interesting.

All wealth is relative; and so is its absence.

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

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.

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?