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

Well,' said Mrs Smiling, 'it sounds an appalling place, but in a different way from all the others. I mean, it does sound interesting and appalling, while the others just sound appalling.

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.

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.

Women are all alike - aye fussin' over their fal-lals and bedazin' a man's eyes, when all they really want is man's blood and his heart out of his body and his soul and his pride.

Surely she had endured enough for one evening without having to listen to intelligent conversation?

Curious how Love destroys every vestige of that politeness which the human race, in its years of evolution, has so painfully acquired.