85 Quotes by Elizabeth Jane Howard

Sir Humphrey's stories about Africa made Charity feel exactly like one of his stuffed trophy heads -- lifeless and glassy eyed. The only difference was that she usually ended up face-down, slumbering on the sofa, instead of hung up on the wall.

Sex on a rainy afternoon is like getting all the gloom and wetness to go away for a while. And afterwards you don't even notice if the rain's still falling.

Charity knew there was nothing more coarse and common than an afternoon in bed with a total stranger -- but the lad installing the telephone had a grin that made her heart turn flips.

Charity knew that she had to be up early in the morning. And she knew that a weepy, silly, ridiculously old-fashioned love story was not the thing to watch with a broken heart. Nevertheless, she watched. And wept. And was still smiling when she fell asleep at three o'clock in the morning, with the remote in her hand and the telly still going.

I've got lots of ambitions, but I only ever think of them when I'm lying around in my undies having a snooze.

Her time with him had very quickly started to feel unreal so that she could hardly believe her own memory of it.

Ich meine nur, dass man über fast alles hinwegkommt. Das ist eines der Dinge, die einfach erstaunlich sind. Das ist auch der Grund, weswegen Leute wie Hamlet so wahnsinnige Angst vor der Hölle hatten. Dass es nicht aufhört, und deswegen glaube ich persönlich auch nicht daran. Ich glaube, solange man lebt, verändert sich alles, und wenn man tot ist, hört es einfach auf.

Du musst einfach dranbleiben,' sagte er. 'Es sollte kein Zeitvertreib sein und keine Pflicht und nichts Ungewöhnliches. Es sollte das Normalste auf der Welt für dich sein.

Charity could chatter dorm-room Marxist theory with the best of them, but a single look from cool, silver-haired Lady Beddington was enough to make her tremble from head to toe.