Will Thisbee gave me The Beginner's Cook-Book for Girl Guides. It was just the thing; the writer assumes you know nothing about cookery and writes useful hints - "When adding eggs, break the shells first.

I don't want to be married just to be married. I can't think of anything lonelier than spending the rest of my life with someone I can't talk to, or worse, someone I can't be silent with.

Then i imagined a lifetime of having to cry to get him to be kind, and I went back to no again.

Reading good books ruins you for enjoying bad books.

All my life I thought that the story was over when the hero and heroine were safely engaged -- after all, what's good enough for Jane Austen ought to be good enough for anyone. But it's a lie. The story is about to begin, and every day will be a new piece of the plot.

I have gone to [this bookshop] for years, always finding the one book I wanted - and then three more I hadn’t known I wanted.

one year as his wife, and id have become one of those abject, quaking women who look at their husbands when someone asks them a question. I've always despised that type, but I see how it happens now