Quotes from Elizabeth Jane Howard

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

Sir Humphrey looked like a sleepy old hippo -- and when he yawned in that big, big, hippopotamus way Charity couldn't help doing likewise.

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.

Charity felt rather snoozy after the long sermon, and she was really very grateful when Reverend Meeps offered her a cup of tea. Church was not so bad when the minister remembered you were only human.

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.

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

Charity groped for the phone, coming up with it at last and croaking "hello" in a voice that sounded exactly like a bullfrog's mating call. Which made a kind of twisted sense -- last night she'd been hunting for a mate as well.

What I like about limousines is they have tinted windows, so no-one can see if you're snogging in the back seat.

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.

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.

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.

Sir Humphrey's stories about Africa made Charity feel exactly like one of his stuffed trophy heads -- lifeless and glassy eyed. The only difference was that she usually ended up face-down, slumbering on the sofa, instead of hung up on the wall.

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.

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.

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

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

Why do these big old country houses always have family portraits in the dining room? Do you really want to eat with someone's gloomy great-grandfather looking down on you?

Love is neither a conditional business nor an ever-fixed mark arrangement. People always know somewhere inside them if they are not loved. No gestures, talk, conciliation, pronouncements can prevail over that deep instinctual knowledge.

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.

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.

Ich weiß es nicht genau. Umwerfend - aber auch etwas unwirklich. Als wäre ich gleichzeitig zwei Personen: Eine, der es passiert, und eine, der es unmöglich passieren kann.

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.

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

Giving the rugged repairman the eye was one thing -- but Charity had no intention of snogging away a whole rainy afternoon when she was supposed to be catching up on her work. Lady Margaret was counting on her! But then again, Lady Margaret didn't have big brown eyes and a cheeky grin.