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I love Evensong. There’s something sad and essentially English about it.

Barbara Pym

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.
BARBARA PYM

Cooks Imagine Writing
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.
BARBARA PYM

Important Mind Odd
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.
BARBARA PYM

Differences Oxford People
Novel writing is a kind of private pleasure, even if nothing comes of it in worldly terms.
BARBARA PYM

Kind Pleasure Writing
How absurd and delicious it is to be in love with somebody younger than yourself. Everybody should try it.
BARBARA PYM

Absurd Love Trying
I pulled myself up and told myself to stop these ridiculous thoughts, wondering why it is that we can never stop trying to analyse the motives of people who have no personal interest in us, in the vain hope of finding that perhaps they may have just a little after all.
BARBARA PYM

May People Trying
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.
BARBARA PYM

Dramatic Hands Thinking
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.
BARBARA PYM

Cooking Funny Home Things
The burden of keeping three people in toilet paper seemed to me rather a heavy one.
BARBARA PYM

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

Encouragement might Unrequited Love
Life is cruel and we do terrible things to each other.
BARBARA PYM

Cruel Life Terrible
She had always been an unashamed reader of novels.
BARBARA PYM

Always Novel Reader Unashamed
I stretched out my hand towards the little bookshelf where I kept cookery and devotional books, the most comfortable bedside reading.
BARBARA PYM

Book Hand Reading
Of course it’s all right for librarians to smell of drink.
BARBARA PYM

Drink Librarian Smell
I love Evensong. There’s something sad and essentially English about it.
BARBARA PYM

English Essential Even Love Something Song
There are various ways of mending a broken heart, but perhaps going to a learned conference is one of the more unusual.
BARBARA PYM

Broken Heart Way

I love Evensong. There’s something sad and essentially English about it.

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I love Evensong. There’s something sad and essentially English about it.

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