Walter de la Mare

I believe in the devil, in the Powers of Darkness, Lawford, as firmly as I believe he and they are powerless _ in the long run. They _ what shall we say? - have surrendered their intrinsicality. You can just go through evil, as you can go through a sewer, and come out on the other side. A loathsome process too.

It is very seldom that one encounters what would appear to be sheer unadulterated evil in a human face; an evil, I mean, active, deliberate, deadly, dangerous. Folly, heedlessness, vanity, pride, craft, meanness, stupidity - yes. But even Iagos in this world are few, and devilry is as rare as witchcraft. ("Bad Company")

Poor sleepers should endeavor to compose themselves. Tampering with empty space, stirring up echoes in pitch-black pits of darkness is scarcely sedative.("Out Of The Deep")

Yes, after all, this by now was his customary loneliness: there was little else he desired for the present than the hospitality of the dark.

It was a pity thoughts always ran the easiest way, like water in old ditches.

A poor old Widow in her weedsSowed her garden with wild-flower seeds;Not too shallow, and not too deep,And down came April -- drip -- drip -- drip.Up shone May, like gold, and soonGreen as an arbour grew leafy June.And now all summer she sits and sewsWhere willow herb, comfrey, bugloss blows,Teasle and pansy, meadowsweet,Campion, toadflax, and rough hawksbit;Brown bee orchis, and Peals of Bells;Clover, burnet, and thyme she smells;Like Oberon's meadows her garden isDrowsy from dawn to dusk with bees.Weeps she never, but sometimes sighs,And peeps at her garden with bright brown eyes;And all she has is all she needs --A poor Old Widow in her weeds.

Tell them I came, and no one answered,That I kept my word," he said.Never the least stir made the listeners,Though every word he spakeFell echoing through the shadowiness of the still houseFrom the one man left awake:Ay, they heard his foot upon the stirrup,And the sound of iron on stone,And how the silence surged softly backward,When the plunging hoofs were gone.

When indeed you positively press your face, so to speak, against the crystalline window of your eyes, your mind is apt to become a perfect vacuum.("Out Of The Deep")

God has mercifully ordered that the human brain works slowly; first the blow, hours afterwards the bruise.

Fancies were all very well for a change, but must be only occasional guests in a world devoted to reality.

We are *all* we are, and all in a sense we care to dream we are. And for that matter, anything outlandish, bizarre, is a godsend in this rather stodgy life. It is after all just what the old boy said _ it's only the impossible that's credible; whatever credible may mean...

Pausing on the threshold, he looked in, conscious not so much of the few familiar sticks of furniture - the trucklebed, the worn strip of Brussels carpet, the chipped blue-banded ewer and basin, the framed illuminated texts on the walls - as of a perfect hive of abhorrent memories.That high cupboard in the corner, from which certain bodiless shapes had been wont to issue and stoop at him cowering out of his dreams; the crab-patterned paper that came alive as you stared; the window cold with menacing stars; the mouseholes, the rusty grate - trumpet of every wind that blows - these objects at once lustily shouted at him in their own original tongues.("Out Of The Deep")

Science, I am told, is making great strides, experimenting, groping after things which no sane man has ever dreamed of before _ without being burned alive for it.

That's why I've just gone on _ collecting this particular kind of stuff _ what you might call riff-raff. There's not a book here, Lawford, that hasn't at least a glimmer of the real thing in it _ just Life, seen through a living eye, and felt. As for literature, and style, and all that gallimaufry, don't fear for them if your author has the ghost of a hint of genius in his making.

Lear, Macbeth. Mercutio _ they live on their own as it were. The newspapers are full of them, if we were only the Shakespeares to see it. Have you ever been in a Police Court? Have you ever watched tradesmen behind their counters? My soul, the secrets walking in the streets! You jostle them at every corner. There's a Polonius in every first-class railway carriage, and as many Juliets as there are boarding-schools. ... How inexhaustibly rich everything is, if you only stick to life.

It's a very odd thing As odd as can be That whatever Miss T. eats Turns into Miss T.

Hi handsome hunting man Fire your little gun Bang! Now the animal Is dead and dumb and done. Nevermore to peep again creep again leap again Eat or sleep or drink again. Oh what fun.

When there hasn't been anything there, nothing can be said to have vanished from the place where it has not been.("Out Of The Deep")