41 Quotes by Barbara Holland

To extract the fullest flavor of our drinking house, we needed to spend serious evening time there, slowly coming to know the bartender and the regulars, their joys and sorrows.

Very few people have no opinions about cats.

Sophistication called for a variety of talents and attitudes, but the minimum requirement was being in New York. Not all New Yorkers achieved it, but nobody elsewhere had a prayer.

A catless writer is almost inconceivable.

By and large, people who enjoy teaching animals to roll over will find themselves happier with a dog.

A catless writer is almost inconceivable. It’s a perverse taste, really, since it would be easier to write with a herd of buffalo in the room than even one cat; they make nests in the notes and bite the end of the pen and walk on the typewriter keys.

It’s curious that throughout our history together, with no apparent effort, people have been able to think of the cat simultaneously as the guardian spirit of the hearth and home, and as the emblem of freedom, independence, and rootlessness.

The thousands of possible lives that used to spread out in front of me have snapped shut into one, and all I get is what I’ve got. It’s time to pass on the possibilities, all those deliciously half-open doors, to my children, and drive them to the airports, and wish them bon voyage.

Exercise, to qualify at all, must be lonely, painfu, humorless, and boring.