Barbara Pym Quotes

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.

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.

There are various ways of mending a broken heart, but perhaps going to a learned conference is one of the more unusual.

Novel writing is a kind of private pleasure, even if nothing comes of it in worldly terms.