125 Quotes by Barbara Pym

I stretched out my hand towards the little bookshelf where I kept cookery and devotional books, the most comfortable bedside reading.

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.

Prue hadn't really been in love with Fabian. Indeed, it was obvious that at times she found him both boring and irritating. But wasn't that what so many marriages were - finding a person boring and irritating and yet loving him? Who could imagine a man who was never boring, or irritating?

You could consider marrying an excellent woman?' I asked in amazement. 'But they are not for marrying.''You're surely not suggesting that they are for the other things?' he said, smiling.That had certainly not occurred to me and I was annoyed to find myself embarrassed.'They are for being unmarried,' I said, 'and by that I mean a positive rather than a negative state.

Letty allowed her to ramble on while she looked around the wood, remembering its autumn carpet of beech leaves and wondering if it could be the kind of place to lie down in and prepare for death when life became too much to be endured.

And yet why should she not be allowed her occasional joys, such very mild ones, which were mostly remembrance of things past?

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.

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.

I suppose an unmarried woman just over thirty, who lives alone and has no apparent ties, must expect to find herself involved or interested in other people's business, and if she is also a clergyman's daughter then one might really say that there is no hope for her.