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

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.

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

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.

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

She had always been an unashamed reader of novels.

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.

We do not have to go in search of passion. Instead we need to search for God, who plants the seed of passion in our hearts.

Do not worry yourself so much. Take joy in things that are joyful, there is no harm in that.

Such as thy words are such will thine affections be esteemed and such as thine affections will be thy deeds and such as thy deeds will be thy life ...

One of the reasons mature people stop learning is that they become less and less willing to risk failure.

Always look for your lost ones in trashcans.

If my work was good enough, I would never have to do publicity.

People tend to view history as if it were another planet and think the modern world was invented in 1963. I don't agree.

The Democrats smell blood and don't want to be told that it's their own.

Originally marriage meant the sale of a woman by one man to another; now most women sell themselves though they have no intention of delivering the goods listed in the bill of sale.

I swear the sparrows called us ten kinds of idiot when we did it.