Dame Edith Sitwell

I am one of those unhappy persons who inspire bores to the greatest flights of art.

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

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

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.

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

My poems are hymns of praise to the glory of life.

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.

Rhythm is one of the principal translators between dream and reality. Rhythm might be described as, to the world of sound, what light is to the world of sight. It shapes and gives new meaning. Rhythm was described by Schopenhauer as melody deprived of its pitch.

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

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