“Fresh newsprint, good coffee, assorted texts, some messages on her BlackBerry, what more could the modern world offer?” — Margaret Drabble Modern world Copy Share Image
The middle years, caught between children and parents, free of neither: the past stretches back too densely, it is too thickly populated,… — Margaret Drabble Caught Copy Share Image
Sometimes it seems the only accomplishment my education ever bestowed on me was the ability to think in quotations. — Margaret Drabble Ability Copy Share Image
I confidently predict the collapse of capitalism and the beginning of history. Something will go wrong in the machinery that converts money… — Margaret Drabble Alive Copy Share Image
“Minor talents or failing talents ask much of those who associate with them. They suck, they cling, they sour, they devour, and… — Margaret Drabble Ambition Copy Share Image
How unjust life is, to make physical charm so immediately apparent or absent, when one can get away with vices untold for… — Margaret Drabble Absent Copy Share Image
World War II put feminism on hold for a long time; the men went away to fight, a lot of women in… — Margaret Drabble Enjoyed Copy Share Image
“Doing a jigsaw was not an intelligence test, or a personality assesment programme; it was a pursuit that lay somewhere between creation… — Margaret Drabble Copy Share Image
How extraordinary people are, that they get themselves into such situations where they go on doing what they dislike doing, and have… — Margaret Drabble Dislike Copy Share Image
Nothing succeeds, they say, like success. And certainly nothing fails like failure. — Margaret Drabble Failing Copy Share Image
“I don't see how you can go too far, in the right direction” — Margaret Drabble Right direction Copy Share Image
Some of what we read in classical literature is not relative to our condition, but then many women novelists and poets have… — Margaret Drabble Books Copy Share Image
“The dining area of the Premier Inn is geared to dispel elderly apprehensions, not to reinforce them. It is noisy and colourful… — Margaret Drabble Food Copy Share Image
And there isn't any way that one can get rid of the guilt of having a nice body by saying that one… — Margaret Drabble Body Copy Share Image
“La notte e vicina per me. Those were the words that an elderly Italian woman, an old crone who swept the stairs,… — Margaret Drabble Years ago Copy Share Image
There are some people who cannot get onto a train without imagining that they are about to voyage into the significant unknown;… — Margaret Drabble Body Copy Share Image
England's not a bad country? It's just a mean, cold, ugly, divided, tired, clapped-out, post-imperial, post- industrial slag-heap covered in polystyrene hamburger… — Margaret Drabble Cold Copy Share Image
Lord knows what incommunicable small terrors infants go through, unknown to all. We disregard them, we say they forget, because they have… — Margaret Drabble Children Copy Share Image
Because if one has an image, however dim and romantic, of a journey's end, one may, in the end, surely reach it,… — Margaret Drabble Abandoned Copy Share Image
I actually remember feeling delight, at two o'clock in the morning, when the baby woke for his feed, because I so longed… — Margaret Drabble Baby Copy Share Image
Auntie Phyl's last months in the care home were extra pieces. Age is unnecessary. Some of us, like my mother, are fortunate… — Margaret Drabble Age Copy Share Image
The human mind can bear plenty of reality but not too much intermittent gloom. — Margaret Drabble Bears Copy Share Image
I used to be a reasonably careless and adventurous person before I had children; now I am morbidly obsessed by seat-belts and… — Margaret Drabble Adventurous Copy Share Image
