It's easy to make money. You put up the sign Bank and someone walks in and hands you his money. The façade is everything.
Christina SteadAnyone would think a thin stick like me, weak and miserable, would go down with everything: do you think I get more than my old cough every winter? I bet I live till ninety, with all my aches and pains. To think that's fifty more years of the Great-I-Am.
Christina SteadIt was easy to see how upsetting it would be if women began to love freely where love came to them. An abyss would open in the principal shopping street of every town.
Christina SteadIf all the rich people in the world divided up their money among themselves, there wouldn't be enough to go around.
Christina SteadIt is a rule of creative ability that it does nothing of any value, while it is possessed by this afflatus of vanity.
Christina SteadThere are so may ways to kills yourself, they're just old-fashioned with their permanganate: do you think I'd take permanganate? I wouldn't want to burn my insides out and live to tell the tale as well: idiots! It's simple, I'd drown myself... Why be in misery at the last?
Christina SteadMoney is a jealous mistress If you want money you must want only money. ... I must tell you the one secret of life, there is only one: everything is a jealous mistress, everything is terribly possessive, and, by God, we want to be terribly possessed if we want to get somewhere - and we want to be terribly possessed - anyhow; or what is life?
Christina SteadWe are primitive men; we taboo what we desire and need. How did the denying of love come to be associated with the idea of morality.
Christina SteadWhy is it every careerist tries to turn his mother into a Madonna--to prove his intellect is a virgin birth, papa had nothing to do with it? It's the sign of the misogynist.
Christina SteadI never wanted to marry anyone like my father; I always preferred those more shoddy.
Christina SteadWhen people are collecting gold they aren't doing business. ... Gold is constipation: even bankruptcy is more fluid. Gold isn't wealth: positions in markets are wealth.
Christina SteadThe waste, the insane freaks of these money men, the cynicism and egotism of their life... I'll show that they are not brilliant, not romantic, not delightful, not intelligent.
Christina SteadThe sensuality, delicacy of literature does not exist for me; only the passion, energy and struggle… Most of my friends deplore this: they are always telling me what I should leave out in order to have success. But I know that nothing has more success in the end than an intelligent ferocity.
Christina SteadCreation of something out of nothing is the most primitive of human passions and the most optimistic
Christina SteadPukka sahib or rank outsider--gentleman or bounder--and it's accent, accent, all the way.
Christina Stead