Edith Sitwell

"Poetry is the deification of reality."

"The public will believe anything, so long as it is not founded on truth."

"I am patient with stupidity but not with those who are proud of it."

"A great many people now reading and writing would be better employed in keeping rabbits."

"Why not be oneself? That is the whole secret of a successful appearance. If one is a greyhound why try to look like a Pekingese?"

"I am dying but otherwise I am quite well."

"Poetry ennobles the heart and the eyes and unveils the meaning of all things upon which the heart and the eyes dwell. It discovers the secret rays of the universe and restores to us forgotten paradises."

"Hot water is my native element. I was in it as a baby and I have never seemed to get out of it ever since."

"I am not eccentric. It's just that I am more alive than most people. I am an unpopular electric eel set in a pond of catfish."

"Said the Sun to the Moon-'When you are but a lonely white crone,And I, a dead King in my golden armour somewhere in a dark wood,Remember only this of our hopeless love That never till Time is done Will the fire of the heart and the fire of the mind be one"

"Winter is the time for comfort, for good food and warmth, for the touch of a friendly hand and for a talk beside the fire: it is the time for home."

"Solo For Ear-Trumpet The carriage brushes through the bright Leaves (violent jets from life to light);Strong polished speed is plunging, heaves Between the showers of bright hot leaves The window-glasses glaze our faces And jar them to the very basis — But they could never put a polish Upon my manners or abolish My most distinct disinclination For calling on a rich relation!In her house — (bulwark built between The life man lives and visions seen) — The sunlight hiccups white as chalk,Grown drunk with emptiness of talk,And silence hisses like a snake — Invertebrate and rattling ache…. Then suddenly Eternity Drowns all the houses like a sea And down the street the Trump of Doom Blares madly — shakes the drawing-room Where raw-edged shadows sting forlorn As dank dark nettles. Down the horn Of her ear-trumpet I convey The news that 'It is Judgment Day!''Speak louder: I don't catch, my dear.'I roared: 'It is the Trump we hear!''The What' 'THE TRUMP!' 'I shall complain!…. the boy-scouts practising again."

"The fusty showman fumbles, must Fit in a particle of dust The universe, for fear it gain Its freedom from my cube of brain. Yet dust bears seeds that grow to grace Behind my crude-striped wooden face As I, a puppet tinsel-pink Leap on my springs, learn how to think—Till like the trembling golden stalk Of some long-petalled star, I walk Through the dark heavens, and the dew Falls on my eyes and sense thrills through."

"Your soul: pure glucose edged with hints Of tentative and half-soiled tints"

"All day long you sit and sew,Stitch life down for fear it grow,Stitch life down for fear we guess At the hidden ugliness. Dusty voice that throbs with heat,Hoping with your steel-thin beat To put stitches in my mind,Make it tidy, make it kind,You shall not: I'll keep it free Though you turn earth, sky and sea To a patchwork quilt to keep Your mind snug and warm in sleep!"

"Answers I kept my answers small and kept them near;Big questions bruised my mind but still I let Small answers be a bullwark to my fear. The huge abstractions I kept from the light;Small things I handled and caressed and loved. I let the stars assume the whole of night. But the big answers clamoured to be moved Into my life. Their great audacity Shouted to be acknowledged and believed. Even when all small answers build up to Protection of my spirit, still I hear Big answers striving for their overthrow. And all the great conclusions coming near"

"I wish the government would put a tax on pianos for the incompetent."

"My personal hobbies are reading, listening to music, and silence."

"Eccentricity is not, as some would believe, a form of madness. It is often a kind of innocent pride, and the man of genius and the aristocrat are frequently regarded as eccentrics because genius and aristocrat are entirely unafraid of and uninfluenced by the opinions and vagaries of the crowd."

"I have often wished I had time to cultivate modesty... But I am too busy thinking about myself."