Quotes from Beryl Bainbridge

As a child she had been taught it was rude to say no, unless she didn't mean it. If she was offered another piece of cake and she wanted it she was obliged to refuse out of politeness. And if she didn't want it she had to say yes, even if it choked her. It was involved but understandable.

In every life there are pauses and interruptions... points of time where one course of action ends and another begins; and by vicissitude of fortune, or alteration of employment, by change of place or loss of friendship, we are forced to say of something, this is the last .

I sense a space around him. He has a manner of eyeing people, even if he's standing face to face, as though he sees them from a distance.

She protested she'd rather freeze than wear the coat Lily had bought her. It was too big and it had a fur collar. 'It sounds rather glamorous,' he said. 'That's as maybe,' she retorted. 'It's too much trouble. You have to paint your face if you wear a fur. It draws attention.

For all his worldliness he was shocked. He was afraid she was becoming corrupted. He had only to suggest she lift her hips a fraction higher or arch her back rather more sharply for her to comply at once. She began to add certain embellishments of her own. On their third night she ordered him quite roughly to bring his legs closer together and found a way of rubbing herself against his knee while sucking at his neck that made him shudder.

Man himself is so buffeted by shifts of thought and mood, not knowing from one day to the next what he truly feels, that a shifting earth is well-nigh the last straw.

Rehearsing with Geoffrey would make it easier when the time came for Meredith to claim her. Penetration, from what she had gathered from library books, was inescapably painful unless one had played a lot of tennis or ridden stallions, and she hadn't done either.

There is nothing more guaranteed to reduce a man to the essentials than to live beneath the sky.

Women are programmed to love completely, and men are programmed to spread it around. We are fools to think it's any different.

The vital accessories to my work are my reference books, such as the complete Shakespeare and a prayer book, and a large refuse bin.