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A fondness for martyrdom, especially of the verbal variety, is common to the young.

Barbara Mertz

I don’t think she realized how much she cared for him, or he for her, until the end. Hasn’t someone said a woman may be known by the men who love her enough to die for her? (If they haven’t, I claim the credit myself.)
BARBARA MERTZ

Credit Men Thinking
Sometimes the characters develop almost without your knowing it. You find them doing things you hadn’t planned on, and then I have to go back to page 42 and fix things. I’m not recommending it as a way to write. It’s very sloppy, but it works for me.
BARBARA MERTZ

Character Knowing Writing
I sometimes wonder what it would be like to be the respected patriarch of an ordinary English family.” “Very boring, Emerson.
BARBARA MERTZ

English Ordinary Sometimes Wonder
If you take a man by surprise, and behave with sufficient arrogance, he will generally do what you ask. -Emerson
BARBARA MERTZ

Arrogance Men Surprise
Marriage, in my view, should be a balanced stalemate between equal adversaries.
BARBARA MERTZ

Marriage Should Views
I never meant to marry. In my opinion, a woman born in the last half of the nineteenth century of the Christian era suffered from enough disadvantages without willfully embracing another.
BARBARA MERTZ

Christian Half Lasts
There is nothing sadder than the cheerful letters of the dead, expressing hopes that were never fulfilled, ambitions that were never achieved, dreams cut off before they could come to fruition.
BARBARA MERTZ

Ambition Cutting Dream
Children, I feel, are as much entitled to privacy as human beings.
BARBARA MERTZ

Children Feel Privacy
There was no warning, not even a knock. The door flew open, and he forgot his present aches and pains in anticipation of what lay in store. The figure that stood in the door was not that of an enemy. It was worse. It was his mother.
BARBARA MERTZ

Doors Mother Pain
No woman really wants a man to carry her off; she only wants him to want to do it.
BARBARA MERTZ

Funny Want Women
Many persons lead lives of crushing boredom.
BARBARA MERTZ

Boredom Crush Persons
Nothing looks as self-satisfied as a contented cat.
BARBARA MERTZ

Cat Looks Self
To argue without knowledge is like trying to weave without thread.
BARBARA MERTZ

Arguing Thread Trying
Sekhmet crawled onto Ramses’s lap and began to purr. ‘The creature oozes like a furry slug,’ said Ramses, eyeing it without favor.
BARBARA MERTZ

Favors Lap Slugs
You are softening toward the young rascal because he is ill, and because he says he likes cats.” “It is an engaging quality, Emerson.” “That depends,” said Emerson darkly, “on how he likes them.
BARBARA MERTZ

Cat Likes Quality
That’s maturity-when you realize that you’ve finally arrived at a state of ignorance as profound as your parents.
BARBARA MERTZ

Ignorance Maturity Profound

A fondness for martyrdom, especially of the verbal variety, is common to the young.

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A fondness for martyrdom, especially of the verbal variety, is common to the young.

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