Edith Sitwell

“Eccentricity is not, as some would believe, a form of madness. It is often a kind of innocent pride...”

“I am one of those who are cursed with the power of seeing the strangeness of all that is simple.”

“The trouble with most Englishwomen is that they are ladies.”

“I am not eccentric. It's just that I am more alive than most people.”

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

“Winter is the time for comfort, for good food and warmth, for the touch of a friendly hand and for a talk beside the fire: it is the time for home.”

“Poetry is the deification of reality.”

“Hot water is my native element. I was in it as a baby, and I have never been out of it since.”

“The poet is a menace to the public in his own day, a canonized saint in the next.”

“A great many people now reading and writing would be better employed keeping rabbits.”

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

“Why not be oneself? That is the whole secret of a successful appearance. If one is a greyhound, why try to look like a Pekingese?”

“Good taste is the worst vice ever invented.”