Rouen shone in dark sunlight and a storm swept it away from my eyes and churned up the broad river with waves which pounced up like cats as our train drew out of the arches of the bridge.
Sylvia Townsend WarnerYou are only young once. At the time it seems endless, and is gone in a flash; and then for a very long time you are old.
Sylvia Townsend WarnerOne doesnโt become a witch to run around being helpful eitherโฆ. Itโs to escape all that โ to have a life of oneโs own, not an existence doled out to you by others, charitable refuse of their thoughts, so many ounces of stale bread of life a day.
Sylvia Townsend WarnerThere are some women in whom conscience is so strongly developed that it leaves little room for anything else. Love is scarcely felt before duty rushes to encase it, anger impossible because one must always be calm and see both sides, pity evaporates in expedients, even grief is felt as a sort of bruised sense of injury, a resentment that one should have grief forced upon one when one has always acted for the best.
Sylvia Townsend Warner... the advantages of being a postman seemed more and more dubious. It is not a congenial profession for anyone who is at all sensitive, for people visit upon the postman all their first annoyance at receiving a couple of bills when they looked for a love-letter, and if a packet is insufficiently stamped they hand over the pennies as though to a despicable bandit, too outrageous to be denied, too groveling to be feared.
Sylvia Townsend Warner