Elizabeth Jane Howard Quotes

A good mystery keeps you up on Saturday night. A bad mystery puts you to sleep on Sunday afternoon. Either way, you come out ahead.

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.

The effort of trying to turn grief into regret, to live entirely on past nourishment, even to keep the sharper parts of nostalgia credible (he found himself beginning to doubt and struggle with the intricacies of the smaller memories), and, most of all, the fearful absence of anything that could begin to take their place, had worn him down.

She laughed at bad jokes, stayed out too late, and overslept too often. Charity Hill loved holidays and she hated budgets and the alarm clock.

She looked as though everything that she didn't like had happened to her.

A massage is just like a movie, really relaxing and a total escape, except in a massage you're the star. And you don't miss anything by falling asleep!

I'm not particularly keen on pity. Pity takes something away from grief. People think they're sharing it, but really they're just taking some. I prefer to keep my grief intact.

Does breakfast in bed count as a morning workout?

I'm not lazy. I'm just really gifted, only instead of being good at music or math I'm good at sleeping late.

Wandering down the street in an aimless sort of way, cold too, in a dress from last night that made young men stop and stare in the street, Charity Hill found herself hating the single life for the very first time.

Laughter is just like champagne
only without the headache afterwards.

It's better to oversleep and miss the boat than get up early and sink.

Holidays were invented so single women could overeat without feeling guilty.

Charity liked brandy. She liked the way it burned her throat while soothing the ache in her heart.

Some girls have a real sexy giggle, but whenever I laugh it always comes out somewhere between a bellow and a snort!

Charity knew she had to begin looking for a job soon. Definitely tomorrow, or the next day. Or perhaps the day after that. Charity didn't believe in procrastination. She just needed to plan her strategy. She was sound asleep on the sofa when Lady Margaret got back from London.

I think best in a hot bath, with my head tilted back and my feet up high.

It seemed awful that the only things she knew about him were those that made him miserable.

Why do they call them daytime dramas, anyway? Shouldn't they be bedtime dramas? All anyone ever talks about is getting someone into bed! Plus if you're at home watching, you're probably watching in bed. And if you're like me, after an hour or two of watching all those sexy goings-on you forget the silly story entirely and fall asleep. Just like it's bedtime!

I have lived my life in the slipstream of experience

Men will consider deeply before they buy a tie or choose a meal; but when it comes to throwing aside their purpose in life, possibly life itself, they do not think at all. They consent to be marshalled, controlled, exposed to unimagined shock, mutilation and death, with barely a tremor, and their reasons for complying, if indeed they have any, would comparen most shamefully with their reasons for doing anything else.

Charity didn't mean to waste the entire afternoon. But her favorite daytime drama was on the telly. It was always the same, she thought, stretching out on the bed to watch. The sex got her interested first, and then the story. Before long she was totally hooked, and deep into the intricate plots and the glamorous goings-on. And afterwards, she just felt drained.
She was sound asleep by the time Lady Margaret came home.

Conducting in a church in London where, he said,

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.

Why can't they invent a pill that will keep you from remembering someone you don't want to remember?

You can't run from feelings, Charity. You have to face them. Otherwise your future will look just like your past.

When you fall asleep after a big lunch you're really just saving up energy to work off all the calories later on.

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.

Sit down and tell me everything, child. Hurt feelings and hopeless despair are no match for tea and biscuits.

It's all right, darling. I can't stand people who are bright-eyed and bushy-tailed at seven in the morning. Give me a girl who only gets going after ten!

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.

It was foolish to indulge in elaborate preconceptions: anticipation was a featherweight, doomed to compete with the inevitable, convincing bulk of reality. The trouble was that one had to face reality without knowing beforehand precisely what it was to be. One had somehow to discover and tread the hard, between the sloughs of fearing the worst and hoping for the best.

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

You can't oversleep if you don't make plans to wake up early.

Dessert doesn't count if you're sharing someone else's.

For a single girl in London, luck isn't always a glass slipper that fits. Sometimes luck is a splash of mud from a passing bus.

Mrs Downs, a large sad lady who described herself, to Rupert's delight, as bulky but fragile, now came four mornings a week to clean the house. She was one of those people who habitually looked on the black side of everything with a cheerfulness that bordered upon the macabre.