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 PYMWhat a good thing there is no marriage or giving in marriage in the after-life; it will certainly help to smooth things out.
More Barbara Pym Quotes
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I stretched out my hand towards the little bookshelf where I kept cookery and devotional books, the most comfortable bedside reading.
BARBARA PYM -
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 -
Of course it’s all right for librarians to smell of drink.
BARBARA PYM -
Life is cruel and we do terrible things to each other.
BARBARA PYM -
The burden of keeping three people in toilet paper seemed to me rather a heavy one.
BARBARA PYM -
Perhaps I need some shattering experience to awaken and inspire me, or at least to give me some emotion to recollect in tranquility. But how to get it? Sit here and wait for it or go out and seek it? . . . I expect it will be sit and wait.
BARBARA PYM -
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.
BARBARA PYM -
Dulcie always found a public library a little upsetting, for one saw so many odd people there.
BARBARA PYM -
There are various ways of mending a broken heart, but perhaps going to a learned conference is one of the more unusual.
BARBARA PYM -
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 -
Oh, this coming back to an empty house,’ Rupert thought, when he had seen her safely up to her door. People – though perhaps it was only women – seemed to make so much of it. As if life itself were not as empty as the house one was coming back to.
BARBARA PYM -
How absurd and delicious it is to be in love with somebody younger than yourself. Everybody should try it.
BARBARA PYM -
Novel writing is a kind of private pleasure, even if nothing comes of it in worldly terms.
BARBARA PYM -
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.
BARBARA PYM