13 Quotes by Victoria Clayton

An unhappy ending makes it literature rather than romantic fiction.

My mother had not acted for ten years. Not since a reviewer wrote that her portrayal of Lady Macbeth put him in mind of an exasperated society hostess burdened with unmannerly guests who had lost the new tennis balls, left the bathrooms in a mess, and finished the gin.

Cordelia glared at me. 'I expect if someone strapped you to table an swung an axe over your naked quivering flesh like The Pit and the Pendulum, you'd be correcting his grammar'.

I think there is nothing more completely beautiful and more beautifully complete than walls lined with well-arranged books.

You may as well attempt to colonise the moon with white mice as publish a volume of poetry'.

Life is a merciless bully for children born into circumstances of grinding poverty, to unhappy families broken apart by crime, drugs, alcohol. It brutalises the affections, cramps the intellect, destroys aspiration.

Mark Anthony had established ascendance the day before by springing claws like flick knives and hissing like a maddened cobra. Dirk had rolled on his back and ratified the peace treaty before the ink was dry, like a dog of sense.

Cordelia glared at me. ‘I expect if someone strapped you to table an swung an axe over your naked quivering flesh like The Pit and the Pendulum, you’d be correcting his grammar’.

It’s hard to say why with some people you could talk all day and all night, while with others it’s a struggle to find enough to say during a single course at dinner.