Quotable Friday (16)

I love reading quotations. Whether they’re funny, wise or poignant, I love those snapshots into the human mind; I love the beauty of language. There aren’t always easy ways to crowbar great passages from novels or thoughtful quotations into ordinary blog posts, so on Fridays I’m letting them speak for themselves.

I have just started reading Agatha Christie's autobiography. She wrote it over a period of 15 years and it's quite a length! Disappointingly, it doesn't cover her mysterious disappearance, but I'm still looking forward to reading all about her life. Following my post on the new Poirot book coming out next year, I've been remembering how much I love this author. This is a quotation from the foreword to the book, where she is thinking about how we never know where our life is going while we're living it.

One is like an actor who has a few lines to say in Act I. He has a type-written script with his cues, and that is all he can know. He hasn't read the play. Why should he? His but to say 'The telephone is out of order, Madam' and then retire into obscurity.

But when the curtain goes up on the day of the performance, he will hear the play through, and he will be there to line up with the rest, and take his call.

To be part of something one doesn't in the least understand is, I think, one of the most intriguing things about life.

I like living. I have somtimes been wildly despairing, acutely miserable, racked with sorrow, but through it all I still know quite certainly that just to be alive is a grand thing.