Quotes from Barbara Pym

I wonder if he kissed her, Jane thought. She was surprised to hear that they had had what seemed to be quite an intelligent conversation, for she had never found Fabian very much good in that line. She had a theory that this was why he tended to make love to woman - because he couldn't really think of much to say to them.

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.

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.

Robina Fairfax's mouth opened in a smile which revealed teeth that could only have been her own, so variously coloured and oddly shaped were they.

She had been feeling that things were pretty desperate if one found oneself talking about and almost quoting Matthew Arnold to comparative strangers, though anything was better than having to pretend you had winter and summer curtains when you had just curtains.

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.

They've moved me to a new office and I don't like it at all. Different pigeons come to the window.

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

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.

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.

Oh, yes, men are very simple and obvious in some ways, you know. They generally react in the way one would expect and it is often rather a cowardly way.

Not that the making of tea can ever really be regarded as a petty or trivial matter and Miss Clovis did seem to have been seriously at fault.

A young man in a white coat was pouring some rich fragrant liquid into her cup. She accepted it with gratitude and resignation, for it was strong and bitter, almost medicinal, and as she drank she was conscious that it was doing her good. Tea is more healthy than alcohol and much cheaper, she reflected, and there must be thousands of people who know this.

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.

Esther Clovis might not be much of a tea-maker but she had considerable organizing ability and knew how to act in a crisis, as at this moment, confronted with the anthropologists who would not go.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

Well, I shouldn't like my wife to do housework in the evenings, would you?' 'No, I suppose not, but women usually have their own way.