Other people’s words about … the sea

The moonlight held all in bond, bleached and austere.
Jackie could hear, far away, the flat sea plodding in and out, dragging its pebbles after it.

From ‘Swords and Crowns and Rings’
by Ruth Park

Ruth Park wrote largely between 1950-90, yet her writing — its themes, characters, emotions, even its ‘Australian-ness’ — still rings true for me.

Note:
This is the first in an occasional series of quotes from writers writing about the sea.I live by the sea; I love the sea; and I set both of my books by the sea. Sea-themed quotes seem kind of appropriate!

Reading Elizabeth Taylor (again)

Other people’s words

I’ve talked before about the writer Elizabeth Taylor: her pithy, devastating prose.

How’s this?

The town seemed to her to be England at its worst, full of people trying to enjoy themselves and not managing it for various reasons — perhaps chiefly those of the weather and the deeply-rooted dullness it had caused.

from ‘The Soul of Kindness
by Elizabeth Taylor

One sentence says so much, doesn’t it?

Reading Elizabeth Taylor

On the lonely horror of writing

At the thought of work, of the book he was writing, must finish, his stomach lurched, just as if he had come unexpectedly on something repellent. He was scared, too. Nowadays, he was so frightened of sitting down to work that he had to drive himself to grapple with it.

from ‘The Soul of Kindness
by Elizabeth Taylor

I love Elizabeth Taylor’s novels.

Her observations about people, (English) society and life are  acute, pithy and devastating.

Try her sometime!

 

Note:
Two people drew my attention to the writing of the English novelist, Elizabeth Taylor, who died in 1975. One was my mother, an inveterate and highly intelligent reader. The other was one of my favourite bloggers, Jane Brocket.