1930s Quotes

“To cut 1930s jobless, FDR taxed corps and rich. Govt used money to hire many millions. Worked then; would now again. Why no debate on that?”
― Richard D. Wolff

“And then they would watch her closely as the dark, coagulated masses took form before her eyes, became flesh and bone, became gradually human. For all their show of reluctance, she had a sense that they enjoyed introducing her to these horrors, as seducers took pleasure in the corruption of innocence.”
― Philip Sington, The Einstein Girl

“What do you want me to do, learn to stutter?”
― Dashiell Hammett, The Maltese Falcon

“Above Constance's desk were nude photographs of women in 1930s France, draped in provocative poses. She had put them there for Bob's viewing pleasure and in return he had placed African art of naked men above his desk for her.”
― Cecelia Ahern, One Hundred Names

“I’d always hated those films—they’d portrayed Dr. Watson as a bumbling idiot, and Sherlock Holmes as an automaton.”
― Brittany Cavallaro, A Study in Charlotte

“The train whistled, and chuffed out of the station. The children pressed their noses to the window and watched the dirty houses and the tall chimneys race by. How they hated the town! How lovely it would be to be in the clean country, with flowers growing everywhere, and birds singing in the hedges! Pg 5”
― Enid Blyton

“When they began, they could not have thought that it would end like this, because their time seemed to them as simple as a flame. We know now that it was a very complicated time and that they were more complicated people than they knew.”
― Murray Kempton, Part of Our Time: Some Ruins & Monuments of the Thirties

“Generally speaking, psychiatry is concerned with the treatment of neuroses, with patients who are aware of their illness and wish to be cured. Dr. Franz Weiss”
― Rennie Airth, The Blood-Dimmed Tide

“Almost immediately after jazz musicians arrived in Paris, they began to gather in two of the city’s most important creative neighborhoods: Montmartre and Montparnasse, respectively the Right and Left Bank haunts of artists, intellectuals, poets, and musicians since the late nineteenth century. Performing in these high-profile and popular entertainment districts could give an advantage to jazz musicians because Parisians and tourists already knew to go there when they wanted to spend a night out on the town. As hubs of artistic imagination and experimentation, Montmartre and Montparnasse therefore attracted the kinds of audiences that might appreciate the new and thrilling sounds of jazz. For many listeners, these locations leant the music something of their own exciting aura, and the early success of jazz in Paris probably had at least as much to do with musicians playing there as did other factors.

In spite of their similarities, however, by the 1920s these neighborhoods were on two very different paths, each representing competing visions of what France could become after the war. And the reactions to jazz in each place became important markers of the difference between the two areas and visions. Montmartre was legendary as the late-nineteenth-century capital of “bohemian Paris,” where French artists had gathered and cabaret songs had filled the air. In its heyday, Montmartre was one of the centers of popular entertainment, and its artists prided themselves on flying in the face of respectable middle-class values. But by the 1920s, Montmartre represented an established artistic tradition, not the challenge to bourgeois life that it had been at the fin de siècle. Entertainment culture was rapidly changing both in substance and style in the postwar era, and a desire for new sounds, including foreign music and exotic art, was quickly replacing the love for the cabarets’ French chansons. Jazz was not entirely to blame for such changes, of course. Commercial pressures, especially the rapidly growing tourist trade, eroded the popularity of old Montmartre cabarets, which were not always able to compete with the newer music halls and dance halls. Yet jazz bore much of the criticism from those who saw the changes in Montmartre as the death of French popular entertainment. Montparnasse, on the other hand, was the face of a modern Paris. It was the international crossroads where an ever changing mixture of people celebrated, rather than lamented, cosmopolitanism and exoticism in all its forms, especially in jazz bands. These different attitudes within the entertainment districts and their institutions reflected the impact of the broader trends at work in Paris—the influx of foreign populations, for example, or the advent of cars and electricity on city streets as indicators of modern technology—and the possible consequences for French culture. Jazz was at the confluence of these trends, and it became a convenient symbol for the struggle they represented.”
― Jeffrey H. Jackson, Making Jazz French: Music and Modern Life in Interwar Paris

“Every sort of trouble I can think of, we've tried it out- become expert at some of it, even, so much so that I've come to wonder whether artists in particularity seek out hard times the way flowers turn their faces toward the sun.”
― Therese Anne Fowler, Z: A Novel of Zelda Fitzgerald

“A Jewish woman in exile in the 1930s is an antihero.”
― Núria Añó

“Driving like a man is one of her few foibles.”
― Elizabeth Wein, The Pearl Thief

“A sideways rain quickly soaked the pair as
they made their way across the street toward a
small diner. Inside, the smell of coffee permeated
the air and Benny Goodman’s band could be
heard from a radio in the corner.”
― Dawn Klinge, Sorrento Girl

“Out of the corner of his eye, he saw another woman sitting over in a wing chair, a pleasantly attractive lady wearing the tasteful clothes of a senior redactrice, or senior civil servant, the stylish black skirt, the dark stockings, the black pumps, and the starched white linen blouse of her caste. The dark hair was swept up in a chignon, elegant and functional, dark eyes glistened as she smiled at him in a professional manner. He could see that she was a woman who met men in a highly assured way—serene, and expert at creating a proper distance.”
― Paul A. Myers, Paris 1935: Destiny's Crossroads

“Sandrine opened her eyes to the soft gray light of early dawn. Recollections of sensual pleasure seemed to caress her body, bringing a smile to her lips. She lay back in the pillow and listened to the breathing of Philippe beside her. She lingered in the memory of the previous night, a memory that was like a warm and tender embrace, an evening of small intimate harmonies. As it should be.”
― Paul A. Myers, Paris 1934: Victory in Retreat

“Then she stood on tiptoe and kissed him sweetly on the lips, “I promise you a love affair with a sun-bathed Austrian princess beyond anything you imagine—in love, in beauty, in intensity. A love that will power you to the end of our time together. You are going to be a fortunate man, Geoffrey Ashbrook.”
― Paul A. Myers, Vienna 1934: Betrayal at the Ballplatz

“She thought of the Good Shepherd with His sheep. Of the Man hanging upon the cross. And the understanding bubbled up within her soul: He makes all things new.”
― Alicia G. Ruggieri, The Fragrance of Geraniums

“In addition, of course, they would be taken to a bath and in the bath vestibule they would be ordered to leave their leather coats, their Romanov sheepskin coats, their woolen sweaters, their suits of fine wool, their felt cloaks, their leather boots, their felt boots (for, after all, these were no illiterate peasants this time, but the Party elite—editors of newspapers, directors of trusts and factories, responsible officials in the provincial Party committees, professors of political economy, and, by the beginning of the thirties, all of them understood what good merchandise was). "And who is going to guard them?" the newcomers asked skeptically. "Oh, come on now, who needs your things?" The bath personnel acted offended. "Go on in and don't worry." And they did go in. And the exit was through a different door, and after passing through it, they received back cotton breeches, field shirts, camp quilted jackets without pockets, and pigskin shoes. (Oh, this was no small thing! This was farewell to your former life—to your titles, your positions, and your arrogance!) "Where are our things?" they cried. "Your things you left at home!" some chief or other bellowed at them. "In camp nothing belongs to you. Here in camp, we have communism! Forward march, leader!"
And if it was "communism," then what was there for them to object to? That is what they had dedicated their lives to.”
― Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago

“I couldn’t have told you the difference between a, Chanel, and a cabbage, and quite often went out wearing odd shoes.
'The Riviera Affair.”
― J. New

“Men in offices are, for the most part, Deadly Bores. They suffer from indigestion and ask you to buy their pills in your lunch hour. They seldom think of their girl employees as human beings at all. What they would prefer, if they were procurable and didn’t cost too much, would be a series of automatic machines, into which you put the week’s salary and took out the letters at the other end. They would prefer these to young women, because you can kick a machine, if you happen to be put out about something, without being hauled into court for assault.”
― Lucy Malleson, Three-a-Penny

“Paul was focused on Ann, alone. “Would
you like to dance?”
The dreaded question. Not because the person
asking was dreadful. Quite the contrary. She
wasn’t immune to his charms, but Ann liked to
feel competent and in control. Dancing was not
going to make her feel that way.”
― Dawn Klinge, Sorrento Girl

“An ancestor from the 1530s would find little different in the 1930s. [Basilicata, Italy]”
― Maria Martin , Tomorrow or Never

“I can't believe that 24 hours ago I was in an Egyptian tomb and now here I am, on the verge of a madcap, Manhattan weekend.”
― Tam Francis

“Most of my money remains in England, although my unworthy carcass may not under usual circumstances ...”
― Kellyn Roth, The Lady of the Vineyard

“So none of the young men we encountered during our season gave you hot pants for them?
Belinda! Your language.
I've been mingling with Americans. Such fun. So Naughty.”
― Rhys Bowen, Her Royal Spyness

“There are some people to whom muddled thinking and self-deception are the two most unforgivable crimes in the world.”
― Margery Allingham, The Fashion in Shrouds

“Inspector Milne's suspicious prying appeared to have awakened her inner Bolshevik, and so I discovered my own lady mother is not above quietly circumventing the law.”
― Elizabeth Wein, The Pearl Thief