Dodie Smith

Dodie Smith
Dorothy Gladys "Dodie" Smithwas an English children's novelist and playwright, known best for the novel The Hundred and One Dalmatians. Other works include I Capture the Castle, and The Starlight Barking. The Hundred and One Dalmatians was adapted into a 1961 Disney animated movie version. Her novel I Capture the Castle was adapted into a 2003 movie version. I Capture the Castle was voted number 82 as "one of the nation's 100 best-loved novels" by the British public as part of...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionDramatist
Date of Birth3 May 1896
I think it [religion] is an art, the greatest one; an extension of the communion all the other arts attempt.
We were restless for ages...After a while I heard an owl hooting and calmed myself by thinking of it flying over the dark fields – and then I remembered it would be pouncing on mice. I love owls, but I wish God had made them vegetarian.
And at last father flung the rug off as if it were hampering him and strode over to the table saying, 'cocoa, cocoa!'-- it might have been the most magnificent drink in the world; which, personally, I think it is.
It's odd how different a house feels when one is alone in it. It makes it easier to think rather private thoughts...
Still, looking through the old volumes was soothing, because thinking of the past made the present seem a little less real.
I know all about the facts of life, and I don't think much of them.
Thinking of death--strange, beautiful, terrible and a long way off--made me feel happier than ever.
My hand is very tired but I want to go on writing. I keep resting and thinking. All day I have been two people - the me imprisoned in yesterday and the me out here on the mound; and now there is a third me trying to get in - the me in what is going to happen next.
I shouldn't think even millionaires could eat anything nicer than new bread and real butter and honey for tea.
Just to be in love seemed the most blissful luxury I had ever known. The thought came to me that perhaps it is the loving that counts, not the being loved in return -- that perhaps true loving can never know anything but happiness. For a moment I felt that I had discovered a great truth.
Rose doesn’t like the flat country, but I always did – flat country seems to give the sky such a chance.
My God - it's a green child!" said the American. "What is this place - the House of Usher?
Father says hot water can be as stimulating as an alcoholic drink and though I never come by one...I can well believe it.
Am I really admitting that my sister is determined to marry a man she has only seen once and doesn't much like the look of? It is half real and half pretense - and I have an idea that it is a game most girls play when they meet an eligible young men. They just...wonder.