Barbara Pym Quotes

How absurd and delicious it is to be in love with somebody younger than yourself. Everybody should try it.

I love Evensong. There's something sad and essentially English about it.

Of course it's all right for librarians to smell of drink.

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 consciousness' type and deal with an hour in the life of a woman at the sink.

The burden of keeping three people in toilet paper seemed to me rather a heavy one.

She had always been an unashamed reader of novels.

There are no sick people in North Oxford. They are either dead or alive. It's sometimes difficult to tell the difference, that's all.

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 my hand on every dramatic occasion.

There are various ways of mending a broken heart, but perhaps going to a learned conference is one of the more unusual.

There are some things too dreadful to be revealed, and it is even more dreadful how, in spite of our better instincts,we long to know about them.

Life is cruel and we do terrible things to each other.

I realised that one might love him secretly with no hope of encouragement, which can be very enjoyable for the young or inexperienced.

What a good thing there is no marriage or giving in marriage in the after-life; it will certainly help to smooth things out.

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.

It was odd how one found oneself making trivial conversation on important occasions. Perhaps it was because one could not say what was really in one's mind.

Novel writing is a kind of private pleasure, even if nothing comes of it in worldly terms.

I imagine the proverb about too many cooks spoiling the broth can be applied to writing as well as anything else. The poetical or literary broth is better cooked by one person.

One did not drink sherry before the evening, just as one did not read a novel in the morning.

It seemed so much safer and more comfortable to live in the lives of other people - to observe their joys and sorrows with detachment as if one were watching a film or a play.

We, my dear Mildred, are the observers of life. Let other people get married by all means, the more the merrier. . . . Let Dora marry if she likes. She hasn't your talent for observation.

But at least it made one realize that life still held infinite possibilities for change.

She knew exactly how she ought to feel, for she was well read in our greater and lesser English poets, but the unfortunate fact was that she did not really like being kissed at all.