Helen Simonson, Major Pettigrew's Last Stand
11 quotes
"The human race is all the same when it comes to romantic relations,' said the Major. 'A startling absence of impulse control combined with complete myopia."
"He opened his mouth to say that she looked extremely beautiful and deserved armfuls of roses, but the words were lost in committee somewhere, shuffled aside by the parts of his head that worked full-time at avoiding ridicule."
"You are a wise man, Major, and I will consider your advice with great care—and humility." He finished his tea and rose from the table to go to his room. "But I must ask you, do you really understand what it means to be in love with an unsuitable woman?" "My dear boy," said the Major. "Is there really any other kind?"
"You Anglo-Saxons have largely broken away from such dependence on family. Each generation feels perfectly free to act alone and you are not afraid."
"I miss being a student," said Abdul Wahid. "I miss the passionate discussions with my friends, and most of all the hours among the books."
"But it's not enough to be in love. It's about how you spend your days, what you do together, who you choose as friends, and most of all it's what work you do ... Better to break both our hearts now than watch them wither away over time."
"Despite his attempts to maintain a vigorous structure of errands, golf games, visits, and meetings, there were sometimes days like this one, filled with rain and touched with a gnawing sense of parts missing from life. When the slick mud ran in the flower beds and the clouds smothered the light, he missed his wife."
"Memories were like tomb paintings, thought the Major, the colors still vivid no matter how many layers of mud and sand time deposited. Scrape at them and they come up all red and blazing."
"Look, the truth belongs to the guy who's best at sticking to his story,' said Ferguson."
"Only sometimes when we pick and choose among the rules we discover later that we have set aside something precious in the process."
"He had never imagined so clearly the consequences of mailing a letter—the impossibility of retrieving it from the iron mouth of the box; the inevitability if its steady progress through the postal system; the passing from bag to bag and postman to postman until a lone man in a van pulls up to the door and pushes a small pile through the letterbox. It seemed suddenly horrible that one's words could not be taken back, one's thoughts allowed none of the remediation of speaking face to face."