Spinster Quotes

Everything in my family has taught me that it's safer to be a happy spinster than to try and love anybody. And, let's be real, when you look at the entire white colonialist capitalist ableist patriarchy, you don't see a whole lot that looks that great in terms of love and romance for surviving queer Black and brown femmes. Not a whole lot. ~ Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha

Lady Penelope Campion- the aging, frazzled, unsightly spinster who...
Who wasn't any of those things. Not by a mile. As fortune would have it, Lady Penelope Campion turned out to be a fair-haired, blue-eyed beauty.
In his mind's eye, he could still see her sprawled across his bed in her dressing gown. Like an all-grown-up Goldilocks, having crept into his house uninvited to test the mattress. Too soft, too hard...?
He didn't know her opinion, but Gabe's reaction was the latter. His cock was in its usual morning prime, standing at full mast. ~ Tessa Dare

She had told the truth: she did not like to dance. Men assumed that a spinster wanted for excitement. Dried-up. They made a point of spinning her wildly across the floor. Once she had fallen, and thereafter she'd declined all invitations. ~ Meredith Duran

I'd rather be a free spinster and paddle my own canoe. ~ Louisa May Alcott

It was easy, terribly easy, to become with time a middle-aged spinster with a sharp tongue. She would have to guard against this. ~ Alexander McCall Smith

Aunt Jettie: "yes, i'm wandering the earth seeking revenge on ben & jerry for giving me the fat a$$ and coronary & I give out love advice to the tragically lonely."
jane: "Is that an ironic eternal punishment for the lady who died an eighty-one year old spinster."
jettie: "single by choice you twirp."
jane: "banshee."
jettie: "bloodsucker. ~ Molly Harper

An old maid, that's what I'm to be. A literary spinster, with a pen for a spouse, a family of stories for children, and twenty years hence a morsel of fame, perhaps ... ~ Louisa May Alcott

[T]he clouds the miller saw as bags of flour, the draper as unironed calico, the confectioner as baked meringue, old Katina the spinster as a bridal veil and Madame Nana as an extension of her climbing rose, while Savvas admired them fulsomely as just clouds. ~ Ioanna Karystiani

Man is potentially a son, and woman is potentially a mother; woman depends on the dependence of man. The spinster, if pathetic at all, is pathetic because she has no one to look after, not because there is no one to look after her. Bear in mind that the conventional spinster keeps a canaary as a substitute for a husband. ~ Stella Benson

I always thought I was going to end up an old spinster, with my cats and fur coats. ~ Gemma Arterton

I mean what else is there for a woman to do if she doesn't want to go from the parental to the marital home with nothing in between? 'An educated woman,'Millie amended. 'An educated woman,' Ursula agreed. ~ Kate Atkinson

Those who live their lives quietly, unmoved by either great sorrows or great joy, are often, in their final years, granted the dispensation of Discovery. Now, for the first time, they find out the secondary roads of the imagination, the side-streets, the alley-ways, the low doors each with a key in the lock.

...But those who have lived richly, exhaustively, staring into every face, attentive to every voice, are only too often pursued by the spinster Furies, and are driven at the end down avenues of stone where the walls reach to the sky, and the doors are sealed, and the pavements are rubbered against all sound but the beat of the hurrying heart. ~ Pamela Hansford Johnson

It's a shame you're going to the ball. I will be all alone in my big house. It seems a shame to waste it – after all, if the undead are going to kill me, I'd hate to die a spinster and a virgin. ~ Michelle Smart

You're suggesting the mysterious X. Where do we look for him?'

Poirot said:

'Obviously in a close circle. There were five people, were there not, whocould have been concerned?'

'Five? Let me see. There was the old duffer who messed about with his herb brewing. A dangerous hobby-but an amiable creature. Vague sort of person. Don't see him as X. There was the girl-she might have polished off Caroline, but certainly not Amyas. Then there was the stockbroker-Crale's best friend. That's popular in detective stories, but I don't believe in it in real life. There's no one else-oh yes, the kid sister, but one doesn't seriously consider her. That's four.'

Hercule Poirot said:

'You forget the governess.'

'Yes, that's true. Wretched people, governesses, one never does remember them. I do recall her dimly though. Middle-aged, plain, competent. I suppose a psychologist would say that she had a guilty passion for Crale and therefore killed him. The repressed spinster! It's no good-I just don't believe it. As far as my dim remembrance goes she wasn't the neurotic type.'

'It is a long time ago.'

'Fifteen or sixteen years, I suppose. Yes, quite that. You can't expect my memories of the case to be very acute. ~ Agatha Christie

And there's nothing wrong with spinsters, anyway. They have nice cats and little bowls full of candy. Mrs. Bailey and Mrs. Newitz are the kindest ladies you'll ever meet, and they have nips of whiskey in their tea like cowboys. ~ Catherynne M Valente

Good day to you, Sister," Gannon grunted, gritting his teeth and clenching the reins in a white-knuckled grip. "May you live to see your great-grandchildren, and may your eyes never grow dim!" Rolin stifled a snicker. His spinster aunt was childless, and her eyesight was poor from years of needlework. ~ William D. Burt

Jackson stood quietly as Alani came into the house. Unlike the other women, she didn't wear a swimsuit. Shame. He'd love to see her in one. Everyone had duly celebrated Trace's engagement, and Alani seemed taken with Priss - but then, who wouldn't be? Priss was funny, smart, cute and - luckily for Trace - stacked.
Unaware of Jackson, Alani stopped to look out the patio doors. She looked . . . wistful. Like maybe she wanted to take part, but couldn't.
In so many ways, despite being kidnapped by flesh peddlers, or maybe because of that, she was still an innocent. At just-barely twenty-three, she acted much older.
Like a virgin spinster.
Every night, in his dreams, they burned up the sheets.
Here, in reality, she avoided him. She avoided involvement.
But he'd get her over that. Somehow.
Suddenly Priss came in, wet hair sleek down her back, rivulets of water trailing between her breasts. She spotted Jackson right off and, after smiling at Alani, asked them both, "Why aren't you guys coming down to swim?"
Alani jerked around to stare at Jackson with big eyes.
His crooked smile told her that he had her in his sights. "I was just about to ask Alani that."
Priss laughed. "You're still dressed."
"I can undress fast enough." He looked at Alani. "What about you?"
Her lips parted. "No, I . . . didn't bring a suit."
"Pity. Maybe we could move up to the cove and skinny-dip in private?"
Pointing a finger at him, Priss sa ~ Lori Foster

Dwayne's real mother was a spinster school teacher who wrote sentimental poetry and claimed to be descended from Richard the Lion-Hearted, who was a king. His real father was an itinerant typesetter, who seduced his mother by setting her poems in type. He didn't sneak them into a newspaper or anything. It was enough for her that they were set in type. ~ Kurt Vonnegut

Fellow almost damn'd in a fair wife; That never set a squadron in the field, Nor the division of a battle knows More than a spinster; unless the bookish theoric, Wherein the toged consuls can propose As masterly as he: mere ~ William Shakespeare

First, her father had a minor stroke, giving Claire a glimpse of his mortality and, by extension, her own. And then she had a vision of herself thirty years in the future: a spinster librarian in an apartment full of cats named after New Wave directors. (Godard, leave Rivette's chew toy alone - ) ~ Jess Walter

She sat on her porch those first nights, wrapped in the brackish tidal air. The future's breeze split across her face and joined up again behind her. She felt herself a spinster whose sudden new suitor must be either sadistic, blind, or a confused fortune hunter. She'd read all the cautionary fairy tales and knew the one inevitable outcome. Still, she consented to this courtship, and even decided to court it back. ~ Richard Powers

The word 'spinster' tells you everything you need to know about our attitude of women who choose not to marry. ~ Caitlin Moran

This explains so much," she said, clucking her tongue in mother-hen fashion. "You're compensating for this withered appendage."
Withered appendage? What the devil was she talking about? He shook his head, trying to clear it. Colin's dire predictions of shriveled twigs and dried currants rattled in his skull. Wide awake now, he fought to sit up, wrestling the sheets.
"Listen, you. I don't know what sort of liberties you've taken while I was insensible, or just what your spinster imagination prepared you to see. But I'll have you know, that water was damned cold."
She blinked at him. "I'm referring to your leg."
"Oh." His leg. That withered appendage ~ Tessa Dare

Quin took on the air of someone who has just realized it's time for the yearly visit to the spinster great-aunt in a desperate attempt to woo her inheritance away from her thirty-eight cats. ~ Amy Fecteau

The God you imagine looks like Father Brennan, the man who baptized you: tall and Irish, with white hair and kind blue eyes, shooting a basketball in black vestments on the parish playground. The Virgin is one of the nuns who ran the adjoining schoolhouse: a spinster with a downy chin, her veil a habit. Old and sacred words, they taught you. You would not invent your own any more than you would try to build your own cathedral. Bead by bead, you whisper the same words Saint Peter spoke in Rome, the same words spoken today by all believers in São Paulo and Boston and Limerick and Cebu. ~ Mia Alvar

Here is the full list of the banned words I used: active homosexual; career women; Third World; blacks; Asians; Australasia; Bangalore; primitive African tribes; crippled; in a wheelchair; hare lip; ethnic minorities; handicapped; spinster; committed suicide; gypsies; Bombay; illegitimate daughter; air hostess; Siamese twins; Calcutta; deaf ears; illegal asylum seeker; province of Northern Ireland; grandmother; bachelor. ~ Rod Liddle

She could become a spinster, like Emily Dickinson, writing poems full of dashes and brilliance, and never gaining weight. ~ Jeffrey Eugenides

Miss Tarabotti felt such rules did not entirely apply to her, as she was a spinster. Had been a spinster for as long as she could remember. In her more acerbic moments, she felt she had been born a spinster. ~ Gail Carriger

Tugging at his collar to loosen it, he pushed at the half-open door and entered the room.
Miss Hathaway stood near the doorway, waiting with tightly leashed impatience, while Merripen remained a dark presence in the corner. As Cam approached and looked into her upturned face, the panic dissolved in a curious rush of heat. Her blue eyes were smudged with faint lavender shadows, and her soft-looking lips were pressed into a tight seam. Her hair had been pulled back and pinned, dark and shining against her head.
That scraped-back hair, the modest restrictive clothing, advertised her as a woman of inhibitions. A proper spinster. But nothing could have concealed her radiant will. She was ... delicious. He wanted to unwrap her like a long-awaited gift. He wanted her vulnerable and naked beneath him, that soft mouth swollen from hard, deep kisses, her pale body flushed with desire. ~ Lisa Kleypas

Miss Alexia Tarabotti was not enjoying her evening. Private balls were never more than middling amusements for spinsters, and Miss Tarabotti was not the kind of spinster who could garner even that much pleasure from the event. To put the pudding in the puff: she had retreated to the library, her favorite sanctuary in any house, only to happen upon an unexpected vampire. She ~ Gail Carriger

I truly hate being a guest in someone's home ... Worst of all, you have to 'make nice' at all hours. I don't want someone across the table from me while I'm eating my breakfast. I don't want to share the newspaper and I don't want to talk to anyone at the end of the day. If I were interested in that shit, I'd be married again by now and put a permanent end to all the peace and quiet. ~ Sue Grafton

Steerpike of the Many Problems," said the Doctor. "What did you say they were? My memory is so very untrustworthy. It's as fickle as a fox. Ask me to name the third lateral bloodvessel from the extremity of my index finger that runs east to west when I lie on my face at sundown, or the percentage of chalk to be found in the knuckles of an average spinster in her fifty-seventh year, ha, ha, ha! – or even ask me, my dear boy, to give details of the pulse rate of frogs two minutes before they die of scabies – these things are no tax upon my memory, ha, ha, ha! But ask me to remember exactly what you said you problems were, a minute ago, and you will find that my memory has forsaken me utterly. Now why is that, my dear Master Steerpike, why is that?"
"Because I never mentioned them," said Steerpike.
"That accounts for it," said Prunesquallor. "That, no doubt, accounts for it. ~ Mervyn Peake

If I was an eccentric old spinster in a Merchant Ivory movie, I'd want to share my lovely cottage with Holly and that's the truth. I'd do the cooking and leave the decorating to her, and we'd be inseparable. ~ Lisa Samson

The cat required far less attendance than a human child, which is one of the reasons why spinster ladies prefer felines to babies. ~ Elizabeth Peters

If the men in the room would only think how they would feel graduating with a 'spinster of arts' degree they would see how important this is. ~ Gloria Steinem

Her chances of a decent marriage were about to be dashed-and all because of a ferret. ~ Lisa Kleypas

It took nearly a year to finish the ever-changing [marriage candidates] list, with the assistance of his sister and his aging spinster aunt, who lorded over their affairs as the self-appointed voice of cultivated reason. During this time, Gabriel struggled to convince straight-from-Oxford Tristan that he must marry, produce heirs, and maintain the family dukedom for Gabriel himself wouldn't marry. He knew he simply did not have the compulsion to inflict that sort of aggravation on a woman. ~ Olivia Parker

But the saints are never the kind of killjoy spinster aunts who go in for faultfinding and lack all sense of humor. (Nor should the Karl Barth who so loved and understood Mozart be regarded as such.)For humor is a mysterious but unmistakable charism inseparable from Catholic faith, and neither the "progressives" nor the "integralists" seem to possess it - the latter even less than the former. ~ Hans Urs Von Balthasar

I shouldn't like to monopolize your time- surely you should be receiving your guests."
Devlin took her to a corner of the drawing room, taking a glass of wine from the tray of a passing servant. He gave the glass to Amanda and lowered his head to murmur in her ear. "There's only one guest who matters to me."
Amanda felt a prickling blush rise in her cheeks. She felt as if she were in a dream. This couldn't be happening to Amanda Briars, the spinster from Windsor... the sweet music, the lovely surroundings, the handsome man whispering seductive nonsense in her ear. ~ Lisa Kleypas

Don't look so stunned," she teased. "I want you, Bram. So much. All the time. When it comes to you, this buttoned-up spinster is just seething with wild, insatiable passion." She kissed him, teasing her tongue over his lips. "It should hardly come as any surprise. You've been telling me so since the very beginning."
"I know," he said wonderingly. "I know. The surprise is that you listened." He cradled her neck in one hand and claimed her mouth in a deep, masterful kiss.

-Susanna & Bram ~ Tessa Dare

A 'career woman,'" Sylvie said, as if the two words had no place in the same sentence. "A spinster," she added, contemplating the word. Ursula wondered why her mother was working so hard to rile her. "Perhaps you will never marry," Sylvie said, as if in conclusion, as if Ursula's life was as good as over. "Would that be such a bad thing? 'The unmarried daughter,'" Ursula said, tucking into an iced fancy. "It was good enough for Jane Austen. ~ Kate Atkinson

Jem was safe from her, and he would ride away with a song on his lips and a laugh at her expense, forgetful of her, and of his brother, and of God; while she dragged through the years, sullen and bitter, the stain of silence marking her, coming in the end to ridicule as a soured spinster who had been kissed once in her life and could not forget it. ~ Daphne Du Maurier

There is perhaps no more rewarding romance heroine than she who is not expected to find love. The archetype comes in many disguises - the wallflower, the spinster, the governess, the single mom - but always with one sad claim: Love is not in her cards. ~ Sarah MacLean

How on earth was this woman a spinster? She was an earl's daughter, surely possessed of a large dowry. If none of the title-hungry, debt-ridden layabouts in Mayfair had seen fit to propose marriage, simple logic dictated there must be something remarkably off-putting about her. An unbearably grating voice, perhaps. A snaggletooth, or poor personal hygiene.
But she displayed none of those features. She was young and pretty, with no detectable odor. Her teeth were a string of pearls, and she had a voice like sunshine. There was nothing off-putting about her whatsoever. She was... on-putting, in every way. ~ Tessa Dare

I was born to be a spinster, and, by God, I'm going to spin. ~ Winifred Holtby

They'll even marry an aging spinster to get it."
She hated him then. Hated the words, the way he spoke them with such simple cruelty. Tears threatened. ~ Sarah MacLean

I think female solitude is a mental condition as well as a physical state. You can be married and a spinster. I think spinster is an identity every woman can claim, if she will ... I feel like a lot of women, or a lot of feminists, joke about taking to the sea or living alone in a cottage as this kind of fun freedom. ~ Mallory Ortberg

He is a young man with a future of power and opportunity and we are young women destined to be either wives and mothers at the very best, or spinster parasites at the worst. ~ Philippa Gregory

After all, if spinster chaperons required their own spinster chaperons there simply wouldn't be enough to go around. ~ Anne Stuart

unopened. When her son stands in the night outside her house, she goes to bed early. In the morning, she looks at his photograph, writes adoring letters to a long-defunct address. A spinster sees the face of the young man who loved her in the mirror of her bedroom, on the ceiling of the bakery, on the surface of the lake, in the sky. The ~ Alan Lightman

A female may be poor or delicate or a spinster, but it does seem ill-advised of Miss Liddiard to combine all three. ~ Zen Cho

If only others knew that Lady Calpurnia Hartwell, proper, well-behaved spinster, entertained deep-seated and certainly unladylike thoughts about fictional heroes. ~ Sarah MacLean

People talk about confidence without ever bringing up hard work. That's a mistake. I know I sound like some dour older spinster on Downton Abbey who has never felt a man's touch and whose heart has turned to stone, but I don't understand how you could have self-confidence if you don't do the work ... I have never, ever, ever, met a high confident person and successful person who is not what a movie would call a 'workaholic.' Because confidence is like respect; you have to earn it. ~ Mindy Kaling

Miss Climpson's active mind quickly conjured up a picture of the rabbit-fair-haired and a little paunchy, with a habit of saying, "I'll ask the wife." Miss Climpson wondered why Providence saw fit to create such men. For Miss Climpson, men were intended to be masterful, even though wicked or foolish. She was a spinster made and not born- a perfectly womanly woman. ~ Dorothy L. Sayers

The duke contents himself mainly with attempting to rule the world and other suchlike nonsense. When one is guiding the patterns of the social universe, a single spinster preternatural is unlikely to cause one undue distress. ~ Gail Carriger

People think the painting is a portrait, but it isn't. Not really. He wasn't even in the field; he conjured it from a room in the house, an entirely different angle. He removed rocks and trees and outbuildings. The scale of the barn is wrong. And I am not that frail young thing, but a middle-aged spinster. It's not my body, really, and maybe not even my head. He ~ Christina Baker Kline

In the New World, "spinster" gained a more precise meaning: in colonial parlance, it indicated an unmarried woman over the age of twenty-three and under the age of twenty-six. At twenty-six, women without spouses became thornbacks, a reference to a sea-skate with sharp spines covering its back and tail. It was not a compliment ~ Rebecca Traister

My body was a reststop for the lonely and I was the spinster innkeeper. ~ Lena Dunham

Choosing to do things your way may doom me to be a penniless spinster."
"If Christ called you to be penniless, would you not become so willingly? ~ Melissa Jagears

And she's certainly a good cook." Miss Betts sighed. "The epitaph of the spinster. ~ Annie Barrows

It is possible for a spinster to be disappointed in lovers, but only the married are ever disappointed in love. ~ Myrtle Reed

A life passed amid gangsters, thieves, smugglers, and gamblers had granted Amelia an unerring nose for greed, vanity, and other assorted venal characteristics, and in Miss Sparrow, she smelled rancid pride combined with the bitter char of unrequited love. She smelled the lemon tang of loneliness mingling with despair. Just under Priscilla Sparrow's skin, Amelia could tell, a rosemary blast of judiciousness rippled, followed by the must decay of jealousy and a lingering note of envy - in short (and in spite of all of Miss Sparrow's better attempts with Dick Crane), the odors of a lifelong spinster. ~ Tiffany Baker

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. ~ Barbara Pym

I particularly want you to meet Miss Bucholtz."
The very idea made him uneasy. "Why is that,
Ma'am?" he bluntly asked.
Mrs. Morgan hesitated. "Keep this under your hat, mind you."
"Yes, Ma'am."
She let out a tired sigh. "I've brought Miss Bucholtz to replace Mr. Gabellini."
Howie pictured a dried up old spinster with the same commanding presence as Mrs. Morgan, a real battle-axe.
"Fireworks are coming. Are you sure a woman is the right, uh, person for the job?"
"Bertha Bucholz is one of the best cooks I know. I guarantee by this time next month, you men will all be sporting five extra pounds. ~ Debra Holland

The 1947 best-seller Modern Woman: The Lost Sex urged that spinsters be barred from teaching children on the grounds of "emotional incompetence." It was the ultimate example of the pendulum swinging - instead of prohibiting the employment of married women as teachers, society now wanted marriage to be mandatory. "A great many children have unquestionably been damaged psychologically by the spinster teacher who cannot be an adequate model of a complete woman either for boys or girls," the authors argued. ~ Gail Collins

The Dean of St Pauls talks absolute balls, The Dean of Westminster showed his to a spinster The Dean of Oswestry frisks girls in the vestry The Bishop of Birmingham buggers boys while confirming 'em, The Bishop of Norwich makes them come in his porridge, The Dean of West Ham smears their bottoms with jam. ~ Jean Findlay

Cormac's eyes eyes narrow. "She wasn't half the Spinster you are, Adelice."
"I'm half the person she was," I say with a shrug, barely keeping my voice steady. "So I guess it evens out. ~ Gennifer Albin

For the first time, she enjoyed the freedom of being a thirty-year-old spinster. This was a distinctly compromising situation that no schoolroom virgin would ever have been allowed to witness. However, she could do as she liked by sheer virtue of her age.
"I took care of my father during the last two years of his life," she said in response to Devlin's comment. "He was an invalid, and required assistance with his clothes. I served as valet, cook, and nurse for him, especially toward the end."
Devlin's face seemed to change, his annoyance vanishing. "What a capable woman you are," he said softly, with no trace of irony. ~ Lisa Kleypas

If a man is unmarried, he is called a bachelor. If a woman is unmarried, she is called a spinster or an old maid. What is it about an unmarried woman that poses such a threat to the patriarchal order? Mainly, it is that women are no one's property when we're unmarried. We're under no one's control, and neither are our children. There is no telling what we might do or say. ~ Marianne Williamson

Dating. The word alone roused fear in her, confusion as to how to begin, and - worst - a disgusting, chilling whisper that assured her she wasn't attractive enough or woman enough or whatever enough to keep a man long term.
Yikes. Um . . . no wonder she'd been hiding behind dowdy clothes and her beloved spinster persona. It was time, past time, to stop hiding. To move beyond the scars Harrison had left. To repair her self-image. And to step into the future wearing a pair of fashionable high heels. ~ Becky Wade

I don't want to relax. I don't want to … oh, dear Lord." He had bent his head to her throat, searching for the visible thrum of her pulse. A light, hot shock went through her. "Don't do that," she said weakly, but he was insistent, his mouth wickedly soft, and her breath hitched as she felt the brush of his tongue. Her hands shot to his muscle-banked shoulders. "Mr. Rohan, you mustn't - "
"This is how to kiss, Amelia." He cradled her head in his palms, deftly tilting it to the side. "Noses go here." Another disorienting brush of his mouth, a wash of sensual heat. "You taste like sugar and tea."
"I already know how to kiss!"
"Do you?" His thumb passed over her kiss-heated lips, urging them to part. "Then show me," he whispered. "Let me in, Amelia."
Never in her life had she thought a man would say something so outrageous to her. And if the words were improper, the gleam in his eyes was positively immolating.
"I … I'm a spinster." She offered the word as if it were a talisman. Everyone knew that rakish gentlemen were supposed to leave spinsters alone. But it appeared no one had told Cam Rohan.
A covert smile deepened the corners of his mouth. "That's not going to keep you safe from me." She tried to turn away from him, but his hands guided her face back to his. "I can't seem to leave you alone. In fact, I'm reconsidering my entire policy on spinsters. ~ Lisa Kleypas

…and the mousesized mousecolored spinster trembling and aghast at her own temerity, staring across it at the childless bachelor in whom ended that long line of men who had had something in them of decency and pride even after they had begun to fail at the integrity and the pride had become mostly vanity and selfpity: from the expatriate who had to flee his native land with little else except his life yet who still refused to accept defeat, through the man who gambled his life and his good name twice and lost twice and declined to accept that either, and the one who with only a clever small quarterhorse for tool avenged his dispossessed father and grandfather and gained a principality, and the brilliant and gallant governor and the general who though he failed at leading in battle brave and gallant men at least risked his own life too in the failing, to the cultured dipsomaniac who sold the last of his patrimony not to buy drink but to give one of his descendants at least the best chance in life he could think of. ~ William Faulkner

Many a housewife staring at the back of her husband's newspaper, or listening to his breathing in bed is lonelier than any spinster in a rented room. ~ Germaine Greer

Emily Dickinson has haunted my life - her poems, her persona, all the tales about her solitude. Ever since I discovered her in the seventh grade, I've had a crush on that spinster in white, who had such a heroic and startling inner landscape of her own. ~ Jerome Charyn

The way she told it, the English counties are littered with aging spinsters who accidentally displayed a spark of intelligence at a debutante dance and were banished forever from civilized society ~ Michelle Cooper

Even Alexia, spinster that she was, was given an allowance large enough to dress her to the height of fashion - although she did tend to stick to trends a little too precisely. The poor thing could not help it. Her choice of clothing simply lacked soul. ~ Gail Carriger

The saints are never the kind of killjoy spinster aunts who go in for faultfinding and lack all sense of humor. ~ Hans Urs Von Balthasar

Judith Brigham expected her daughter to remain a spinster the rest of her life. In the more pungent phraseology of her soon-to-be stepfather, "Margaret had a face like the ass end of a gasoline truck and a body to match." He ~ Stephen King

No, she'd spent the last five years begging the Lord to help her find contentment in her spinster status. And he'd been faithful. She had her library, her Ladies Aid work, the children's reading hour. She could come and go as she pleased, spend her money as she deemed fit, all without the hassle of first gaining a man's permission. And if the loneliness sometimes ate away at her like water poured on a sugarloaf ... ? Well, God had seen her through the last five years. She figured he could be depended upon to see her through the next fifty. ~ Karen Witemeyer

She was a luxuriously made woman, with her velvety skin and curly auburn hair, and her decidedly voluptuous figure... and he was a man who appreciated quality when he saw it. Her features were pleasant, if not precisely beautiful, but the eyes... well, they were extraordinary. Penetrating gray... the light gray of April rain... intelligent, expressive eyes.
Something about her made him want to smile. He wanted to kiss her spinster-stiff mouth until it was soft and warm with passion. He wanted to charm and tease her. Most of all, he wanted to know the person who had written a novel filled with characters whose proper facades concealed such raw emotions. It was a novel that should have been written by a woman of the world, not by a country-bred spinster.
Her written words had haunted him long before he met her. Now, after their tantalizing encounter in her home, he wanted more of her. He liked the challenge of her, the surprises of her, the fact that she had done extremely well for herself. They were alike in that way.
Yet she possessed a gentility that he lacked and very much admired. Just how she could manage to be so natural and simultaneously so ladylike, two qualities that had always before struck him as being completely opposed, was an intriguing mystery. ~ Lisa Kleypas

Without a doubt ... the worst part of being a single woman was having to take care of your own car. ~ Lisa Kleypas