Quotessence
Home / Quotes / Quote by Florida Scott-Maxwell

Quote by Florida Scott-Maxwell

“Another day to be filled, to be lived silently, watching the sky and the lights on the wall. No one will come probably. I have no duties except to myself. That is not true. I have a duty to all who care for me — not to be a problem, not to be a burden. I must carry my age lightly for all our sakes, and thank God I still can. Oh that I may to the end.”

Quote by Florida Scott-Maxwell

Book:The Measure of My Days: One Woman's Vivid, Enduring Celebration of Life and Aging
Create image

Work

The Measure of My Days: One Woman's Vivid, Enduring Celebration of Life and Aging

Browse quotes and source details for this work. more

Author

Florida Scott-Maxwell

Florida Scott-Maxwell was an English playwright known for her profound portrayal of female characters and her sharp insight into social issues. Her works had a significant impact on the British theater scene in the early 20th century. more

You May Also Like

“No, this, she felt, was real life and if she wasn’t as curious or passionate as she had once been, that was only to be expected. It would be inappropriate, undignified, at thirty-eight, to conduct friendships or love affairs with the ardour and intensity of a twenty-two-year-old. Falling in love like that? Writing poetry, crying at pop songs? Dragging people into photo-booths, taking a whole day to make a compilation tape, asking people if they wanted to share your bed, just for company? If you quoted Bob Dylan or T.S. Eliot or, God forbid, Brecht at someone these days they would smile politely and step quietly backwards, and who would blame them? Ridiculous, at thirty-eight, to expect a song or book or film to change your life. No, everything had evened out and settled down and life was lived against a general background hum of comfort, satisfaction and familiarity. There would be no more of these nerve-jangling highs and lows. The friends they had now would be the friends they had in five, ten, twenty years’ time. They expected to get neither dramatically richer or poorer; they expected to stay healthy for a little while yet. Caught in the middle; middle class, middle-aged; happy in that they were not overly happy. Finally, she loved someone and felt fairly confident that she was loved in return. If someone asked Emma, as they sometimes did at parties, how she and her husband had met, she told them: ‘We grew up together.”

LifeRomance
Book:One Day
Create image

“I’m about to begin halfway saying that— —that she was incompetent. Incompetent for life. She had never figured out how to figure things out. She was only vaguely beginning to know the kind of absence she had of herself inside her. If she were an expressive creature she would say: the world is outside me, I am outside me.”

LonelinessIdentityMelancholyIntrospectionAlienationBleakPsychological FictionAbsurdismExistential AngstFeminist Literature
Book:The Hour of the Star
Create image