“She had always been an unashamed reader of novels.”

I realised that one might love him secretly with no hope of encouragement, which can be very enjoyable for the young or inexperienced.

Life is cruel and we do terrible things to each other.

The small things of life were often so much bigger than the great things . . . the trivial pleasure like cooking, one’s home, little poems especially sad ones, solitary walks, funny things seen and overheard.

It was odd how one found oneself making trivial conversation on important occasions. Perhaps it was because one could not say what was really in one’s mind.

I was so astonished that I could think of nothing to say, but wondered irrelevantly if I was to be caught with a teapot in my hand on every dramatic occasion.

There are no sick people in North Oxford. They are either dead or alive. It’s sometimes difficult to tell the difference, that’s all.

I stretched out my hand towards the little bookshelf where I kept cookery and devotional books, the most comfortable bedside reading.

My thoughts went round and round and it occurred to me that if I ever wrote a novel it would be of the ‘stream of consciousness’ type and deal with an hour in the life of a woman at the sink.

Dulcie always found a public library a little upsetting, for one saw so many odd people there.

How absurd and delicious it is to be in love with somebody younger than yourself. Everybody should try it.

Once outside the magic circle the writers became their lonely selves, pondering on poems, observing their fellow men ruthlessly, putting people they knew into novels; no wonder they were without friends.

The burden of keeping three people in toilet paper seemed to me rather a heavy one.

There are some things too dreadful to be revealed, and it is even more dreadful how, in spite of our better instincts,we long to know about them.

You know Mildred would never do anything wrong or foolish. I reflected a little sadly that this was only too true and hoped I did not appear too much that kind of person to others. Virtue is an excellent thing and we should all strive after it, but it can sometimes be a little depressing.

Of course it’s all right for librarians to smell of drink.

I imagine the proverb about too many cooks spoiling the broth can be applied to writing as well as anything else. The poetical or literary broth is better cooked by one person.

The more I suffer, the more I love.

I just love the idea that people disappear into the story for a while. You grab a book, and you want to get back to it, and your life becomes a bit of an interruption. I would love readers to feel like that.

Reader look, not on his picture but his book.

My television fed me visions, but I never created my own until I became a reader.

Writers, because they write, are condemned never to be readers of their own stories…The memory of first putting a story into words will always prevent writers from reading their work as an ordinary reader would.

A book is a box brimming with incendiary material. The reader strikes the match.

I’ve lived on royalties all my life. It is the readers who have supported me.

The writer’s object is – or should be – to hold the reader’s attention.