Barbara Pym Quotes

22 quotes in 463 categories

• How absurd and delicious it is to be in love with somebody younger than yourself. Everybody should try it.
• [The woman] paused and seemed to take a deep breath. 'You see,' she declared. 'I am Tom Mallow's aunt.' Catherine's first instinct was to burst…
• Once outside the magic circle the writers became their lonely selves, pondering on poems, observing their fellow men ruthlessly, putting people they knew into novels;…
• I was so astonished that I could think of nothing to say, but wondered irrelevantly if I was to be caught with a teapot in…
• Life is cruel and we do terrible things to each other.
• Oh, but it was splendid the things women were doing for men all the time, thought Jane. Making them feel, perhaps sometimes by no more…
• Of course it's alright for librarians to smell of drink.
• Perhaps I need some shattering experience to awaken and inspire me, or at least to give me some emotion to recollect in tranquility. But how…
• Perhaps there can be too much making of cups of tea, I thought, as I watched Miss Statham filling the heavy teapot. Did we really…
• I love Evensong. There's something sad and essentially English about it.
• Dulcie always found a public library a little upsetting, for one saw so many odd people there...
• I stretched out my hand towards the little bookshelf where I kept cookery and devotional books, the most comfortable bedside reading.
• Oh, this coming back to an empty house,' Rupert thought, when he had seen her safely up to her door. People - though perhaps it…
• She had always been an unashamed reader of novels ...
• My thoughts went round and round and it occurred to me that if I ever wrote a novel it would be of the 'stream of…
• The small things of life were often so much bigger than the great things . . . the trivial pleasure like cooking, one's home, little…
• The burden of keeping three people in toilet paper seemed to me rather a heavy one.
• You know Mildred would never do anything wrong or foolish. I reflected a little sadly that this was only too true and hoped I did…
• I realised that one might love him secretly with no hope of encouragement, which can be very enjoyable for the young or inexperienced.
• I pulled myself up and told myself to stop these ridiculous thoughts, wondering why it is that we can never stop trying to analyse the…

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