Mortal Coils is a collection of five short fictional pieces written by Aldous Huxley in 1922.
The title uses a phrase from Hamlet, Act 3, Scene 1:
- ... To die, to sleep,
- To sleep, perchance to dream; aye, there's the rub,
- For in that sleep of death, what dreams may come,
- When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
- Must give us pause ...
The stories all concern themselves with some sort of trouble, normally of an amorous nature, and often ending with disappointment.
Read more about Mortal Coils: The Stories
Famous quotes containing the words mortal and/or coils:
“What quarrel, what harshness, what unbelief in each other can subsist in the presence of a great calamity, when all the artificial vesture of our life is gone, and we are all one with each other in primitive mortal needs?”
—George Eliot [Mary Ann (or Marian)
“Squalor spreads its hideous length
through the carts and the asses’ feet,
squalor coils and reopens
and creeps under barrow
and heap of refuse....”
—Hilda Doolittle (1886–1961)