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.
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.
violent scenery stimulants
Scenery can be a violent stimulant.
trying needs print
I need words and print... I need print like an addict. I could live without it, perhaps. But I hope I never have to try.
discovery play would-be
There would be more genuine rejoicing at the discovery of a complete new novel by Jane Austen than any other literary discovery, short of a new major play by Shakespeare.
nice guilt body
And there isn't any way that one can get rid of the guilt of having a nice body by saying that one can serve society with it, because that would end up with oneself as what? There simply doesn't seem to be any moral place for flesh.
travel discovery people
There are some people who cannot get onto a train without imagining that they are about to voyage into the significant unknown; as though the notion of movement were inseparably connected with the notion of discovery, as though each displacement of the body were a displacement of the soul.
tired london
London, how could one ever be tired of it?
english-novelist misery pleasure rare seen
The rare pleasure of being seen for what one is, compensates for the misery of being it.