3 Quotes by E.M. Delafield

There is no unemployment in the Soviet Union; everybody can, and indeed must, work; and so far as I know, everybody does. As a kind of offset to this universal activity, everybody—when not working—sits about and waits.

(Query here becomes unavoidable: Does not a misplaced optimism exist, common to all mankind, leading on to false conviction that social engagements, if dated sufficiently far ahead, will never really materialise?)

She is never alone when she has Her Books. Books, to her, are Friends. Give her Shakespeare or Jane Austen, Meredith or Hardy, and she is Lost - lost in a world of her own. She sleeps so little that most of her nights are spent reading.