Alice Thomas Ellis Quotes

#1. Phrase books seem to be a universal and eternal source of hilarity and I think I know why. Their authors go mad in the course of compiling them.

Alice Thomas Ellis

#2. Claudia's the sort of girl who goes through life holding onto the sides.

Alice Thomas Ellis

#3. There is a hint of despair in the cry of 'I told you so,' an element of disappointment in the apparent satisfaction when idols turn out to have clay feet. The human race, when it thinks it has proved that no one is superior, is partly gratified and partly depressed.

Alice Thomas Ellis

#4. They shared an image of the American Christmas
riches, reconciliations, tears, snow, success, sentiment, furs and firs, the shop windows shining like Heaven and everything good for sale.

Alice Thomas Ellis

#5. Things are never so indescribably ghastly that they can't get worse.

Alice Thomas Ellis

#6. There seems to be a peculiar and particular tie between men who have been drunk together.

Alice Thomas Ellis

#7. I have frequently thought that the dead should be buried with all their belongings. It seems weirdly perverse that their clothes should still be here when the people you love best in the world have gone.

Alice Thomas Ellis

#8. Optimism is the last resort of those in deep despair. There can't be any optimists in heaven.

Alice Thomas Ellis

#9. When a person implores you to be reasonable what he means is that you should speed round forthwith to his point of view.

Alice Thomas Ellis

#10. I have never had much trouble simultaneously entertaining diametrically opposed propositions, and welcome the possibility that this is not because I have one mind and am out of it, but because I have lots of them, all beavering away on their own.

Alice Thomas Ellis

#11. Those who live on vanity must, not unreasonably, expect to die of mortification.

Alice Thomas Ellis

#12. Everything looked the same every morning: all in order and just the same. It was in the nights that the difference held sway and there was no comfort for lost and lonely things.

Alice Thomas Ellis

#13. This perhaps is what is meant by hiraeth: a lifelong yearning for what is gona and out of reach.

Alice Thomas Ellis

#14. Adolescence is usually typified by an unanswerable combination of innocence and insolence.

Alice Thomas Ellis

#15. There is no reciprocity. Men love women, women love children, children love hamsters.

Alice Thomas Ellis

#16. Our only hope rests on the off-chance that God does exist.

Alice Thomas Ellis

#17. Men were made for war. Without it they wandered greyly about, getting under the feet of the women, who were trying to organize the really important things of life.

Alice Thomas Ellis

#18. Death is the last enemy: once we've got past that I think everything will be alright.

Alice Thomas Ellis

#19. Evil and laughter cannot co-exist.

Alice Thomas Ellis

#20. Well, I think adultery is a filthy habit,' said Rose, 'like using someone else's toothbrush.

Alice Thomas Ellis

#21. To cook well and with imagination you have to be in a cheerful and contented frame of mind, and thus inclined to be generous.

Alice Thomas Ellis

#22. There is no relationship. Women, like men, women, children, babies hamsters.
This is the Google Translate of the quote in Persian, above.

Alice Thomas Ellis

#23. One can get very fond of the people one meets in bars. The trouble is they then appear sort of different in the daylight and you realize that taking them with you is rather like taking a goldfish for a walk: not entirely correct, and surprising for the next people you run into.

Alice Thomas Ellis