The days weren't long enough for the reading she wanted to do.

I lack what the English call character, by which they mean the power to refrain.

But then books, as I'm sure you know, seldom prompt a course of action. Books generally just confirm you in what you have, perhaps unwittingly, decided to do already. You go to a book to have your convictions corroborated. A book, as it were, closes the book.

Nature played a cruel trick on her by giving her a waxed mustache.

The days weren't long enough for the reading she wanted to do.

f they'd been working with Alec Guinness, for instance, they wouldn't have known they were born if they'd not towed the line!

There's very little in the substance of [THE LADY IN THE VAN] which is not fact though some adjustments have had to be made. Over the years Miss Shepherd was visited by a succession of social workers so the character in the play is a composite figure. . . . A composite too are the neighbours, Pauline and Rufus, though I have made Rufus a publisher in remembrance of my neighbour, the late Colin Haycraft, the proprietor of Duckworth's.