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

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.

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

[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.

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.

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.

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.