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.

A straight nose is a great help if one wishes to look serious'.

One of the disadvantages of almost universal education was the fact that all kinds of persons acquired a familiarity with one's favorite writers. It gave one a curious feeling; it was like seeing a drunken stranger wrapped in one's dressing gown.

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

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.

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

On the whole, Flora liked it better when they were silent, though it did rather give her the feeling that she was acting in one of the less cheerful German highbrow films.