She had always been an unashamed reader of novels.

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

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.

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

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

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

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.