Barbara Pym Quotes & Sayings

Once you get into the habit of falling in love you will find that it happens quite often and means less and less,' said — Barbara Pym

Well, I haven't really anything to eat at home, I began, but then stopped, as I realised that a dreary revelation of the state of one's larder was hardly the way to respond to an invitation to dinner. — Barbara Pym

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

It doesn't seem like them, somehow, I said. They don't usually do good by stealth. No, Julian agreed, their left hand usually knows perfectly well what their right hand is doing. — Barbara Pym

When we reached the bus-stop we were a long way behind in the queue and when the bus came it took only half a dozen people. I noticed a group of priests looking down on us from the upper deck and I felt that somehow the Pope and his Dogmas had triumphed after all. — Barbara Pym

Perhaps long spaghetti is the kind of thing that ought to be eaten quite alone with nobody to watch one's struggles. Surely — Barbara Pym

If only one could clear out one's mind and heart as ruthlessly as one did one's wardrobe. — 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

It seems to be a kind of lounge,' she added, tripping over a small footstool. The floor seemed to be littered with them, like toadstools. — Barbara Pym

So many things seemed to come in plastic bags now that it was difficult to keep track of them. The main thing was not to throw it away carelessly, better still to put it away in a safe place, because there was a note printed on it which read 'To avoid danger of suffocation keep this wrapper away from babies and children'. They could have said from middle-aged and elderly persons too, who might well have an irresistible urge to suffocate themselves. — Barbara Pym

Yes, I like sitting at a table in the sun,' I agreed, 'but I'm afraid I'm one of those typical English tourists who always wants a cup of tea. — Barbara Pym

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

Inanimate objects were often so much nicer than people. — Barbara Pym

Prue hadn't really been in love with Fabian. Indeed, it was obvious that at times she found him both boring and irritating. But wasn't that what so many marriages were - finding a person boring and irritating and yet loving him? Who could imagine a man who was never boring, or irritating? — Barbara Pym

One did not drink sherry before the evening, just as one did not read a novel in the morning. — Barbara Pym

She set about preparing her supper. It would have to be one of those classically simple meals, the sort that French peasants are said to eat and that enlightened English people sometimes enjoy rather self-consciously - a crusty French loaf, cheese, and lettuce and tomatoes from the garden. Of course there should have been wine and a lovingly prepared dressing of oil and vinegar, but Dulcie drank orange squash and ate mayonnaise that came from a bottle. — Barbara Pym

Perhaps there can be too much making of cups of tea, I thought, as I watched Miss Statham filling the heavy teapot. Did we really need a cup of tea? I even said as much to Miss Statham and she looked at me with a hurt, almost angry look, 'Do we need tea? she echoed. 'But Miss Lathbury ... ' She sounded puzzled and distressed and I began to realise that my question had struck at something deep and fundamental. It was the kind of question that starts a landslide in the mind. I mumbled something about making a joke and that of course one needed tea always, at every hour of the day or night. — Barbara Pym

Of course it's alright for librarians to smell of drink. — Barbara Pym

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

it was as if no woman could be really happy even when she was being taken out to dinner. He felt he ought to say something profound, but, naturally enough, nothing profound came out. 'I mean, she leads — Barbara Pym

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

Dear Mildred,' he smiled, 'you are not the kind of person to expect things as your right even though they may be. — Barbara Pym

It was the ring on the left hand that people at the Old Girls' Reunion looked for. Often, in fact nearly always, it was an uninteresting ring, sometimes no more than the plain gold band or the very smallest and dimmest of diamonds. Perhaps the husband was also of this variety, but as he was not seen at this female gathering he could only be imagined, and somehow I do not think we ever imagined the husbands to be quite so uninteresting as they probably were. — Barbara Pym

Perhaps all love had something of the ridiculous in it. — Barbara Pym

for I had observed that men did not usually do things unless they liked doing them. — Barbara Pym

Nicholas isn't one of these dramatic preachers,' she said quickly, feeling a little confused. The ladies looked interested, as if hoping that she might be guilty of further disloyalties, but Jane recollected herself in time and said: 'Of course, he's a very good preacher; what I meant was that he doesn't go in for a lot of quotations and that kind of thing.' 'Much wiser not to,' agreed Miss Doggett. 'Simple Christian teaching is what we want, isn't it, really?' Jane — Barbara Pym

But at least it made one realize that life still held infinite possibilities for change. — Barbara Pym

Oh, yes, men are very simple and obvious in some ways, you know. They generally react in the way one would expect and it is often rather a cowardly way. I — Barbara Pym

The time left over from these good works was given to 'making a home' for her brother, whom she adored, though she was completely undomesticated and went about it with more enthusiasm than skill. — Barbara Pym

You lose your sense of perspective when you get too close, and the charm goes. — Barbara Pym

in something for him, so I bought some white — Barbara Pym

Oh, God, yes! You'd hate sharing a kitchen with me. I'm such a slut,' she said, almost proudly. — Barbara Pym

Oh, but it was splendid the things women were doing for men all the time, thought Jane. Making them feel, perhaps sometimes by no more than a casual glance, that they were loved and admired and desired when they were worthy of none of these things - enabling them to preen themselves and puff out their plumage like birds and bask in the sunshine of love, real or imagined, it didn't matter which. — Barbara Pym

As for his sudden change of heart, he had suddenly remembered the end of Mansfield Park, and how Edmund fell out of love with Mary Crawford and came to care for Fanny. Dulcie must surely know the novel well, and would understand how such things can happen. — Barbara Pym

Mr Boultbee seems to have done us a good turn," said Nicholas. "I gather his sermons were not much liked."
No; we got very tired of Africa and I didn't feel that what he told us rang quite true. He said that one African chief had had a thousand wives. I found that a little difficult to believe."
Well, we know what men are," said Jane casually, surprised that Miss Dogget, with her insistence on men only wanting one thing, should have found this difficult to believe. — Barbara Pym

I think just a cup of tea...' There was something to be said for tea and a comfortable chat about crematoria. — Barbara Pym

[The woman] paused and seemed to take a deep breath. 'You see,' she declared. 'I am Tom Mallow's aunt.' Catherine's first instinct was to burst out laughing. She wondered why there was something slightly absurd about aunts; perhaps it was because one thought of them as dear, comfortable creatures, somehow lacking in dignity and prestige. — 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

We, my dear Mildred, are the observers of life. Let other people get married by all means, the more the merrier ... Let Dora marry if she likes. She hasn't your talent for observation. — Barbara Pym

...I told myself that, after all, life was like that for most of us - the small unpleasantness rather than the great tragedies; the little useless longings rather than the great renunciations and dramatic love affairs of history or fiction. — Barbara Pym

Jane decided he was certainly beautiful, with brown eyes and a well-shaped nose. It is a refreshing thing for an ordinary-looking woman to look at a beautiful man occasionally and Jane gave herself up to contemplation. — Barbara Pym

For although she had been, and still was, very much admired, she had got into the way of preferring unsatisfactory love affairs to any others, so that it was becoming almost a bad habit. — Barbara Pym

Those quotations were really quite obscure. Anyone can see that he is a very well read man. — Barbara Pym

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

A room in Holmhurst was the last thing she'd come to - better to lie down in the wood under the beech leaces and the bracken and wait quietly for death. — Barbara Pym

I love Evensong. There's something sad and essentially English about it. — Barbara Pym

The conversation did not go very well and I began telling him about the people with their trays in the great cafeteria and suggesting that it would have done us more good to go there to be put in mind of our own mortality. — Barbara Pym

I hope you don't mind tea in mugs,' she said, coming in with a try. 'I told you I was a slut. — Barbara Pym

Sitting aimlessly in bedrooms- often on the bed itself- is another characteristic feature of the English holidays. The meal was over and it was only twenty five past seven. 'The evening stretches before us,' Viola said gloomily. — Barbara Pym

Belinda decided that she could miss doing her room with a clear conscience, as there were so many more important things to be done. It was unlikely that Miss Liversedge would be visiting them and putting them to shame by writing 'E. Liversedge' with her finger, as she had once done when Emily had neglected to dust the piano. — 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

Ageing, slightly mad and on the threshold of retirement, it was an uneasy combination and it was no wonder that people shied away from her or made only the most perfunctory remarks. It was difficult to imagine what her retirement would be like - impossibe and rather gruesome to speculate on it. — Barbara Pym

Prudence thanked him, experiencing that feeling of contrition which comes to all of us when we have made up our minds to dislike people for no apparent reason and they then perform some kind action. — Barbara Pym

Yes! In the sea of life enisled, With echoing straits between us thrown, Dotting the shoreless watery wild, We mortal millions live ALONE, — Barbara Pym

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

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

It's so good for you to think of nothing. I wish you could do it more often. — Barbara Pym

Perhaps it's better to be unhappy than not to feel anything at all. — Barbara Pym

Virtue is an excellent thing and we should all strive after it, but it can sometimes be a little depressing. — Barbara Pym

This may sound a cynical thing to say, but don't you think men sometimes leave difficulties to be solved by other people or to solve themselves? After — Barbara Pym

She had now reached an age when one starts looking for a husband rather more systematically than one does at nineteen or even at twenty-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

How displaced is the sympathy lavished on adolescents. There is a yet more difficult age which comes later, when one has less to hope for and less ability to change, when one has cast the die and has to settle into a chosen life without the consolations of habit or the wisdom of maturity. — Barbara Pym

But of course, she remembered, that was why women were so wonderful; it was their love and imagination that transformed these unremarkable beings. For most men, when one came to think of it, were undistinguished to look at, if not positively ugly. Fabian was an exception, and perhaps love affairs with handsome men tended to be less stable because so much less sympathy and imagination were needed on the woman's part? — 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

But now respectable elderly women do not need to excuse themselves for buying brandy or even gin, though it is quite likely that some still do and perhaps one may hope that they always will. — Barbara Pym

But surely liking the same things for dinner is one of the deepest and most lasting things you could possibly have in common with anyone,' argued Dr. Parnell. 'After all, the emotions of the heart are very transitory, or so I believe; I should think it makes one much happier to be well-fed than well-loved. — Barbara Pym

Oh the benison of it, she thought, for she seemed to need comfort now, not only because she was tired after the journey and far away from John, but because she had admitted to herself that she loved him, had let her love sweep over her like a kind of illness, 'giving in' to flu, conscious only of the present moment. — Barbara Pym

but it's a good feeling and one does so like to have that. — Barbara Pym

I wonder if he kissed her, Jane thought. She was surprised to hear that they had had what seemed to be quite an intelligent conversation, for she had never found Fabian very much good in that line. She had a theory that this was why he tended to make love to woman - because he couldn't really think of much to say to them. — Barbara Pym

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. — Barbara Pym

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

Let me hasten to add that I am not at all like Jane Eyre, who must have given hope to so many plain women who tell their stories in the first person, nor have I ever thought of myself as being like her. — Barbara Pym

Robina Fairfax's mouth opened in a smile which revealed teeth that could only have been her own, so variously coloured and oddly shaped were they. — Barbara Pym

She had always been an unashamed reader of novels ... — Barbara Pym

I hesitated at the top of the stairs, feeling nervous and stupid, for this was a situation I had not experienced before, and my training did not seem to be quite equal to it. Also, I suddenly thought of the parrot in a cage and that was distracting. — Barbara Pym

Julian Malory was about forty, a few years younger than his sister. Both were tall, thin and angular, but while this gave to Julian a suitable ascetic distinction, it only seemed to make Winifred, with her eager face and untidy grey hair, more awkward and gaunt. She was dressed, as usual, in an odd assortment of clothes, most of which had belonged to other people. — Barbara Pym

He is a brilliant man, said Miss Doggett. She helped him a good deal in his work, I think. Mrs. Bonner says that she even learned to type so that she could type his manuscripts for him. 'Oh, then he had to marry her,' said Miss Morrow sharply. 'That kind of devotion is worse than blackmail - a man has no escape from that. — Barbara Pym

In the weeks that had passed since she had met Rupert Stonebird at the vicarage her interest in him had deepened, mainly because she had not seen him again and had therefore been able to build up a more satisfactory picture of him than if she had been able to check with reality. — Barbara Pym

Mimosa did lose its first freshness too quickly to be worth buying and I must not allow myself to have feelings, but must only observe the effects of other people's. — Barbara Pym

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

It seemed so much safer and more comfortable to live in the lives of other people - to observe their joys and sorrows with detachment as if one were watching a film or a play. — Barbara Pym

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

Well, then, we may as well find somewhere to have tea. After spiritual comes bodily refreshment. — Barbara Pym

Letty allowed her to ramble on while she looked around the wood, remembering its autumn carpet of beech leaves and wondering if it could be the kind of place to lie down in and prepare for death when life became too much to be endured. — Barbara Pym

What a good thing there is no marriage or giving in marriage in the after-life; it will certainly help to smooth things out. — Barbara Pym

Jane felt that he would write from the depths of a wretchedness that would not necessarily be insincere because its outward signs were so theatrical. Pesumably attractive men and probably woman too must always be suffering in this way; they must so often have to reject and cast aside love, and perhaps even practice did not always make them ruthless and cold-blooded enough to do it without feeling any qualms. — Barbara Pym

Also, it was the morning and it seemed a little odd to be thinking about poetry before luncheon. — Barbara Pym

The day comes in the life of every single man living alone when he must give a dinner party, however unpretentious, and that day had now arrived for Rupert Stonebird. — Barbara Pym

I have often wondered whether it is really a good thing to be honest by nature and upbringing; certainly it is not a good thing socially, for I feel sure that the tea-party would have been more successful had I not explained that the tea was really Indian which I had unfortunately made too weak. Thus, — Barbara Pym

Just the kind of underclothes a person like me might wear, I thought dejectedly, so there is no need to describe them. — Barbara Pym

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. — Barbara Pym

If the two women feared that the coming of this date [their retirement] might give some clue to their ages, it was not an occasion for embarrassment because nobody else had been in the least interested, both of them having long ago reached ages beyond any kind of speculation. — Barbara Pym

I gather that she hasn't much money,' said Julian, 'so I hardly know what would be a fair rent to ask. I found I couldn't bring myself to mention it, and neither, apparently, could she.'
'Well, really, I should have thought that would have been her first question,' I said, thinking what a remarkable delicate conversation they must have had. 'She can hardly expect to get three rooms for nothing. You must be careful she doesn't try to do you down.'
'Oh, Mildred,' Julian looked grieved, 'you wouldn't say that if you had seen her. She has such sad eyes. — Barbara Pym

However romantically ill John might look, it seemed that he had nothing worse than an unromantic cold. — Barbara Pym

She had imagined that the presence of of what she thought of as clever people would bring about some subtle change in the usual small talk. The sentences would be like bright jugglers' balls, spinning through the air and being deftly caught and thrown up again. But she saw now that conversation could also be compared to a series of incongruous objects, scrubbing-brushes, dish-cloths, knives, being flung or hurtling rather than spinning, which were sometimes not caught a all but fell to the ground with resounding thuds. — Barbara Pym

If it is true that men only want one thing, Jane asked herself, is it perhaps just to be left to themselves with their soap animals or some other harmless little trifle? — Barbara Pym

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

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

It was only sometimes, when a spring day came in the middle of winter, that one had a sudden feeling that nothing was really impossible — Barbara Pym