Quotes from Barbara Pym

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.

You could consider marrying an excellent woman?' I asked in amazement. 'But they are not for marrying.' 'You're surely not suggesting that they are for the other things?' he said, smiling. That had certainly not occurred to me and I was annoyed to find myself embarrassed. 'They are for being unmarried,' I said, 'and by that I mean a positive rather than a negative state.

Tropical flowers rioted over her plump body.

when she thought it over, Jane decided that she was really much more like Emma Woodhouse.

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.

But wasn't that what so many marriages were—finding a person boring and irritating and yet loving him? Who could imagine a man who was never boring or irritating?

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.

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?

come of it?

No, I'm not,' I said ungraciously, for nobody really likes to be called a dear. There is something so very faint and dull about it.

Do you cook for yourself then?' 'I live alone, you know. Since my wife died…' 'Yes, of course, Miss Morrow told me.' 'Really? What did she say?' 'Oh, how sad it was and all that sort of thing,' said Jane rapidly with her eyes on the ground.

I wondered that she should waste so much energy fighting over a little matter like wearing hats in chapel, but then 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.

Miss Birkinshaw was like an old ivory carving, Prudence thought, ageless, immaculate, with lace at her throat. She had been the same to many generations who had studied English Literature under her tuition. Had she ever loved? Impossible to believe she had not, there must surely have been some rather splendid tragic romance a long time ago - he had been killed or dead of typhoid fever, or she, a new woman enthusiastic for learning, had rejected him in favour of Donne, Marvell and Carew.

Prudence dressed with her usual elegance and painted her face and eyes with almost more than her usual care. It was at once force of habit and a kind of defiance.

She had rheumatism too, but Belinda realized that she would have to have something out of self-defence and perhaps with the passing of the years it had become a reality. One never knew.

How could she explain to him what her love was like? That although it was a love stronger than death, it wasn't the kind of love one *did* anything about?

He wrote the kind of books that nobody could be expected to read.

And before long I should be certain to find myself at this sink peeling potatoes and washing up; that would be a nice change when both proof-reading and indexing began to pall. Was any man worth this burden ? Probably not but one shouldered it bravely and cheerfully and in the end it might turn out to be not so heavy after all.

I wasn't really making fun of you,' said Jane as they settled themselves in the carriage. 'I was seeing you as a human being for the first time.

I wondered that she should waste so much energy fighting over a little matter like wearing hats in chapel, but then I told myself that, after all, life was like that for most of us—the small unpleasantnesses rather than the great tragedies; the little useless longings rather than the great renunciations and dramatic love affairs of history or fiction.

But men ought to be able to manage their own affairs," I said. "After all most of them don't seem to mind speaking frankly and making people unhappy.

It was the ring on the left hand that people at the Old Girls' Reunion looked for. Often, in fact nearly always, it was an uninteresting ring, sometimes no more than the plain gold band or the very smallest and dimmest of diamonds. Perhaps the husband was also of this variety, but as he was not seen at this female gathering he could only be imagined, and somehow I do not think we ever imagined the husbands to be quite so uninteresting as they probably were.

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.

He certainly is very charming, but he makes me feel slightly ill at ease—almost as if I were a woman manquée, if there could be such a thing—you know, something lacking in me." "Oh, well, that's hardly his fault." "No," Dulcie agreed. "Mine, of course.