Angela Thirkell

British writer (1890-1961)

Angela Margaret Thirkell (née Mackail, 30 January 1890 – 29 January 1961) was an English novelist. She also wrote a brief memoir, Three Houses (1931), of her childhood.

Angela Thirkell, portrait by John Collier, 1914

Quotes

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Three Houses (1931)

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  • One more long happy Sunday had joined the pale golden Sundays that are gone. Better — to us at any rate — than Sundays now. Though these latter-day Sundays may be real enough, to us they are but the illusion and the bygone days the reality. There is always in our minds the hope that we may find again those golden unhastening days and wake up and dream.

High Rising (1933)

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  • Laura looked up at the shelf of her novels, with Adrian Coates's name on their backs. She had been lucky, she thought, to fail into the hands of so agreeable and helpful a publisher. ...
    So in time her first story went to Adrian, who recognising in it a touch of good badness almost amounting to genius, gave her a contract for two more.

Cheerfulness Breaks In (1940)

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  • The organ pealed forth, though never except in fiction does it do this, rather blaring and bursting, or in more refined cases quavering. In every heart began to spring that exquisite hope, seldom if ever realised, that the bride will have had a fit, or eloped with someone else.

Growing Up (1943)

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  • Doris Phipps and Lily-Annie Pollett, though they looked incredibly plain and depraved in oyster satin blouses, tight-seated, bell-bottomed trousers, red nails on dirty hands, greasy curls hanging on their shoulders, a cigarette for ever glued to their lips, were really very nice, kind girls.
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