Barbara Pym Quotes

Brides over thirty shouldn't wear white,' said Jessie, who had now joined them.

Well, they may have a perfect right to,' said Jane.

A woman over thirty might not like you to think that,' said Jessie quickly. 'There can be something shameful about flaunting one's lack of experience.

But surely liking the same things for dinner is one of the deepest and most lasting things you could possibly have in common with anyone,' argued Dr. Parnell. 'After all, the emotions of the heart are very transitory, or so I believe; I should think it makes one much happier to be well-fed than well-loved.

She set about preparing her supper. It would have to be one of those classically simple meals, the sort that French peasants are said to eat and that enlightened English people sometimes enjoy rather self-consciously - a crusty French loaf, cheese, and lettuce and tomatoes from the garden. Of course there should have been wine and a lovingly prepared dressing of oil and vinegar, but Dulcie drank orange squash and ate mayonnaise that came from a bottle.

The day comes in the life of every single man living alone when he must give a dinner party, however unpretentious, and that day had now arrived for Rupert Stonebird.

The conversation did not go very well and I began telling him about the people with their trays in the great cafeteria and suggesting that it would have done us more good to go there to be put in mind of our own mortality.

So many things seemed to come in plastic bags now that it was difficult to keep track of them. The main thing was not to throw it away carelessly, better still to put it away in a safe place, because there was a note printed on it which read 'To avoid danger of suffocation keep this wrapper away from babies and children'. They could have said from middle-aged and elderly persons too, who might well have an irresistible urge to suffocate themselves.

Dulcie always found a public library a little upsetting, for one saw so many odd people there ...

Yes, I like sitting at a table in the sun,' I agreed, 'but I'm afraid I'm one of those typical English tourists who always wants a cup of tea.

Well, I haven't really anything to eat at home, I began, but then stopped, as I realised that a dreary revelation of the state of one's larder was hardly the way to respond to an invitation to dinner.

Prudence's flat was in the kind of block where Jane imagined people might be found dead, though she had never said this to Prudence herself; it seemed rather a macabre fancy and not one to be confided to an unmarried woman living alone.

How displaced is the sympathy lavished on adolescents. There is a yet more difficult age which comes later, when one has less to hope for and less ability to change, when one has cast the die and has to settle into a chosen life without the consolations of habit or the wisdom of maturity.

Novel writing is a kind of private pleasure, even if nothing comes of it in worldly terms.

Mimosa did lose its first freshness too quickly to be worth buying and I must not allow myself to have feelings, but must only observe the effects of other people's.

Well, then, we may as well find somewhere to have tea. After spiritual comes bodily refreshment.

Life is cruel and we do terrible things to each other.

For although she had been, and still was, very much admired, she had got into the way of preferring unsatisfactory love affairs to any others, so that it was becoming almost a bad habit.

Oh, but it was splendid the things women were doing for men all the time, thought Jane. Making them feel, perhaps sometimes by no more than a casual glance, that they were loved and admired and desired when they were worthy of none of these things - enabling them to preen themselves and puff out their plumage like birds and bask in the sunshine of love, real or imagined, it didn't matter which.

Yes, life has to go on, and I suppose a cup of tea does make it seem to be doing that more than anything.

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

As for his sudden change of heart, he had suddenly remembered the end of Mansfield Park, and how Edmund fell out of love with Mary Crawford and came to care for Fanny. Dulcie must surely know the novel well, and would understand how such things can happen.

Dear Mildred,' he smiled, 'you are not the kind of person to expect things as your right even though they may be.

It's so good for you to think of nothing. I wish you could do it more often.

Also, it was the morning and it seemed a little odd to be thinking about poetry before luncheon.

Jane decided he was certainly beautiful, with brown eyes and a well-shaped nose. It is a refreshing thing for an ordinary-looking woman to look at a beautiful man occasionally and Jane gave herself up to contemplation.

Ageing, slightly mad and on the threshold of retirement, it was an uneasy combination and it was no wonder that people shied away from her or made only the most perfunctory remarks. It was difficult to imagine what her retirement would be like - impossibe and rather gruesome to speculate on it.

Once outside the magic circle the writers became their lonely selves, pondering on poems, observing their fellow men ruthlessly, putting people they knew into novels; no wonder they were without friends.

She had always been an unashamed reader of novels ...

When we reached the bus-stop we were a long way behind in the queue and when the bus came it took only half a dozen people. I noticed a group of priests looking down on us from the upper deck and I felt that somehow the Pope and his Dogmas had triumphed after all.

It was only sometimes, when a spring day came in the middle of winter, that one had a sudden feeling that nothing was really impossible

The time left over from these good works was given to 'making a home' for her brother, whom she adored, though she was completely undomesticated and went about it with more enthusiasm than skill.

I have often wondered whether it is really a good thing to be honest by nature and upbringing; certainly it is not a good thing socially, for I feel sure that the tea-party would have been more successful had I not explained that the tea was really Indian which I had unfortunately made too weak. Thus,

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.

I gather that she hasn't much money,' said Julian, 'so I hardly know what would be a fair rent to ask. I found I couldn't bring myself to mention it, and neither, apparently, could she.'
'Well, really, I should have thought that would have been her first question,' I said, thinking what a remarkable delicate conversation they must have had. 'She can hardly expect to get three rooms for nothing. You must be careful she doesn't try to do you down.'
'Oh, Mildred,' Julian looked grieved, 'you wouldn't say that if you had seen her. She has such sad eyes.

A room in Holmhurst was the last thing she'd come to - better to lie down in the wood under the beech leaces and the bracken and wait quietly for death.

Jane felt that he would write from the depths of a wretchedness that would not necessarily be insincere because its outward signs were so theatrical. Pesumably attractive men and probably woman too must always be suffering in this way; they must so often have to reject and cast aside love, and perhaps even practice did not always make them ruthless and cold-blooded enough to do it without feeling any qualms.

I realised that one might love him secretly with no hope of encouragement, which can be very enjoyable for the young or inexperienced.

Oh the benison of it, she thought, for she seemed to need comfort now, not only because she was tired after the journey and far away from John, but because she had admitted to herself that she loved him, had let her love sweep over her like a kind of illness, 'giving in' to flu, conscious only of the present moment.

Belinda decided that she could miss doing her room with a clear conscience, as there were so many more important things to be done. It was unlikely that Miss Liversedge would be visiting them and putting them to shame by writing 'E. Liversedge' with her finger, as she had once done when Emily had neglected to dust the piano.

Sitting aimlessly in bedrooms- often on the bed itself- is another characteristic feature of the English holidays. The meal was over and it was only twenty five past seven. 'The evening stretches before us,' Viola said gloomily.

but it's a good feeling and one does so like to have that.

One wouldn't believe there could be so many people, and one must love them all.

[The woman] paused and seemed to take a deep breath. 'You see,' she declared. 'I am Tom Mallow's aunt.' Catherine's first instinct was to burst out laughing. She wondered why there was something slightly absurd about aunts; perhaps it was because one thought of them as dear, comfortable creatures, somehow lacking in dignity and prestige.

I suppose by the time one is seventy one can say confidently and from a personal experiece that things will pass. At thirty one is still living experimentally, guessing that they will yet almost hoping that they will not.

She saw herself perhaps as an Elizabeth Bowen heroine - for one did not openly identify oneself with Jane Austen's heroines - and 'To The North' was her favourite novel.

Miss Limpsett was older, uglier and more untidy than I had remembered. She had obviously had a hard and tiring day, for her grey hair was awry as if she had been running her fingers through it, and there was ink on her fingers. Her face was haggard, and it occurred to me that it was not only this day which had been hard and tiring, but all days and even life itself.

She had imagined that the presence of of what she thought of as clever people would bring about some subtle change in the usual small talk. The sentences would be like bright jugglers' balls, spinning through the air and being deftly caught and thrown up again. But she saw now that conversation could also be compared to a series of incongruous objects, scrubbing-brushes, dish-cloths, knives, being flung or hurtling rather than spinning, which were sometimes not caught a all but fell to the ground with resounding thuds.

I love Evensong. There's something sad and essentially English about it.

Once you get into the habit of falling in love you will find that it happens quite often and means less and less,' said

Well, some books are destined never to be read,' said Mervyn. 'Its's the natural order of things.'
Like women who are destined never to marry, though Ianthe.

Perhaps long spaghetti is the kind of thing that ought to be eaten quite alone with nobody to watch one's struggles. Surely

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

in something for him, so I bought some white

But of course, she remembered, that was why women were so wonderful; it was their love and imagination that transformed these unremarkable beings. For most men, when one came to think of it, were undistinguished to look at, if not positively ugly. Fabian was an exception, and perhaps love affairs with handsome men tended to be less stable because so much less sympathy and imagination were needed on the woman's part?

...I told myself that, after all, life was like that for most of us - the small unpleasantness rather than the great tragedies; the little useless longings rather than the great renunciations and dramatic love affairs of history or fiction.

Surely many a romance must have been nipped in the bud by sitting opposite somebody eating spaghetti?

Perhaps all love had something of the ridiculous in it.

If the two women feared that the coming of this date [their retirement] might give some clue to their ages, it was not an occasion for embarrassment because nobody else had been in the least interested, both of them having long ago reached ages beyond any kind of speculation.

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.

On the occasion of a visit to Jane Austen's childhood home in Steventon, Hampshire:

"I put my hand down on Jane's desk and bring it up covered with dust. Oh that some of her genius might rub off on me! One would have imagined the devoted female custodian going round with her duster at least every other day.

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.

A novel of the kind that Prudence enjoyed, well written and tortuous, with a good dash of culture and the inevitable unhappy or indefinite ending, which was so like life.

I pulled myself up and told myself to stop these ridiculous thoughts, wondering why it is that we can never stop trying to analyse the motives of people who have no personal interest in us, in the vain hope of finding that perhaps they may have just a little after all.

Those quotations were really quite obscure. Anyone can see that he is a very well read man.

She had now reached an age when one starts looking for a husband rather more systematically than one does at nineteen or even at twenty-one.

It seems to be a kind of lounge,' she added, tripping over a small footstool. The floor seemed to be littered with them, like toadstools.

I think just a cup of tea...' There was something to be said for tea and a comfortable chat about crematoria.

Nicholas isn't one of these dramatic preachers,' she said quickly, feeling a little confused. The ladies looked interested, as if hoping that she might be guilty of further disloyalties, but Jane recollected herself in time and said: 'Of course, he's a very good preacher; what I meant was that he doesn't go in for a lot of quotations and that kind of thing.' 'Much wiser not to,' agreed Miss Doggett. 'Simple Christian teaching is what we want, isn't it, really?' Jane

I hesitated at the top of the stairs, feeling nervous and stupid, for this was a situation I had not experienced before, and my training did not seem to be quite equal to it. Also, I suddenly thought of the parrot in a cage and that was distracting.

Oh, God, yes! You'd hate sharing a kitchen with me. I'm such a slut,' she said, almost proudly.

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.

it was as if no woman could be really happy even when she was being taken out to dinner. He felt he ought to say something profound, but, naturally enough, nothing profound came out. 'I mean, she leads

Perhaps there can be too much making of cups of tea, I thought, as I watched Miss Statham filling the heavy teapot. Did we really need a cup of tea? I even said as much to Miss Statham and she looked at me with a hurt, almost angry look, 'Do we need tea? she echoed. 'But Miss Lathbury ... ' She sounded puzzled and distressed and I began to realise that my question had struck at something deep and fundamental. It was the kind of question that starts a landslide in the mind. I mumbled something about making a joke and that of course one needed tea always, at every hour of the day or night.

He is a brilliant man, said Miss Doggett. She helped him a good deal in his work, I think. Mrs. Bonner says that she even learned to type so that she could type his manuscripts for him. 'Oh, then he had to marry her,' said Miss Morrow sharply. 'That kind of devotion is worse than blackmail - a man has no escape from that.