And when April like an over-lustful lover leaped upon the lush flanks of the Downs there would be yet another child in the wretched hut down on Nettle Flitch Field, where Meriam housed the fruits of her shame.

Like all really strong-minded women, on whom everybody flops, she adored being bossed about. It was so restful.

Well, when I am fifty-three or so I would like to write a novel as good as Persuasion but with a modern setting, of course. For the next thirty years or so I shall be collecting material for it. If anyone asks me what I work at, I shall say, 'Collecting material'. No one can object to that.

Flora sighed. It was curious that persons who lived what the novelists called a rich emotional life always seemed to be a bit slow on the uptake.

She liked Victorian novels. They were the only kind of novel you could read while eating an apple.

There are some things (like first love and one’s first reviews) at which a woman in her middle years does not care to look too closely.

The life of a journalist is poor, nasty, brutish, and short. So is his style