Margaret Drabble
Margaret Drabble
Dame Margaret Drabble, Lady Holroyd DBE FRSL, is an English novelist, biographer, and critic...
affluence bones coconut furniture life near question quite spoken texture utility
Affluence was, quite simply, a question of texture ... The threadbare carpets of infancy, the coconut matting, the ill-laid linoleum, the utility furniture ... had all spoken of a life too near the bones of subsistence, too little padded, too severely worn.
positive witty impossible-things
When nothing is sure, everything is possible.
expectations people needs
How extraordinary people are, that they get themselves into such situations where they go on doing what they dislike doing, and have no need or obligation to do, simply because it seems to be expected.
unjust vices life-is
How unjust life is, to make physical charm so immediately apparent or absent, when one can get away with vices untold for ever.
succeed failing
Nothing succeeds, they say, like success. And certainly nothing fails like failure.
garden banking alive
I confidently predict the collapse of capitalism and the beginning of history. Something will go wrong in the machinery that converts money into money, the banking system will collapse totally, and we will be left having to barter to stay alive. Those who can dig in their garden will have a better chance than the rest. I'll be all right; I've got a few veg.
views stories literature
Some of what we read in classical literature is not relative to our condition, but then many women novelists and poets have turned it upside down and told the stories from the other point of view.
people efficient flexible
Why can't people be both flexible and efficient?
positive baby morning
I actually remember feeling delight, at two o'clock in the morning, when the baby woke for his feed, because I so longed to have another look at him.
temptation laptops machines
I have switched on this modern laptop machine. And I have told myself that I must resist the temptation to start playing solitaire upon it.
class people
What foolsmiddle-classgirls are to expect other people to respect the same gods as themselves and E M Forster.
lord terror infant
Lord knows what incommunicable small terrors infants go through, unknown to all.
imagination kind imagine
You have to be careful what you imagine, because the act of imagining is the act of encouraging yourself to be a certain kind of person.
violent scenery stimulants
Scenery can be a violent stimulant.