Charles Condomine:
If you're trying to compile an inventory of my sex life, I feel it only fair to warn you that you've omitted several episodes. I shall consult my diary and give you a complete list after lunch.
Charles Condomine:
What do you suppose induced Agnes to leave us?
Ruth Condomine:
The reason was becoming increasingly obvious, my dear.
Charles Condomine:
Mm. We must keep Edith in the house more.
Charles Condomine:
Anything interesting in The Times
Ruth Condomine:
Don't be silly, dear.
Violet Bradman:
I must say I find bicycling very exhausting. Those awful hills...
Madame Arcati:
Just knack. Down with your head, up with your heart, and you're over the top like a flash and skimming down the other side like a dragonfly.
[
first lines]
words on a Victorian sampler:
"When we are young / We read and believe / The most fantastic things. / When we are older / We learn with regret / That these things cannot be"
Narrator:
We are quite, quite wrong!
Violet Bradman:
Can you foretell the future?
Madame Arcati:
Certainly not. I disapprove of fortune-tellers most strongly.
Violet Bradman:
Oh, really - why?
Madame Arcati:
Too much guesswork and fake mixed up with it - even when the gift is genuine - and it only very occasionally is - you can't count on it.
Ruth Condomine:
Why not?
Madame Arcati:
Time again. Time is the reef upon which all our frail mystic ships are wrecked.
Ruth Condomine:
You mean because it has never yet been proved that the past and the present and the future are not one and the same thing?
Madame Arcati:
I long ago came to the conclusion that nothing has ever been definitely proved about anything.
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