All those unclaimed arms and legs lost in the fields of Flanders – Ursula imagined them pushing roots down into the mud and shoots up to the sky and growing once again into men. An army of men marchin...
All that is necessary for the forces of evil to win is for enough good women to do nothing.
About the Book He had been reconciled to death during the war and then suddenly the war was over and there was a next day and a next day and a next day.
A good rule of thumb was that the more noise someone was making the less likely they were to die.
A fool too late bewares when all the peril is past.
A coincidence is just an explanation waiting to happen
But one cannot look backward, only forward. What has passed has passed forever.
The great novels of the world were about three things - death, money and sex. Occasionally a whale.
‘The mistake,’ Sylvie said, ‘is thinking that love equates with happiness.’)
Pam wasn't what Gloria would have called a friend, just someone she had known for so long that she had given up trying to get rid of her.
When I'm writing, my neural pathways get blocked. I can't read. I can barely hold a conversation without forgetting words and names. I wish I could wear the same clothes and eat the same food each day...
Was there a store somewhere full of unwanted secrets?
Royal blue frock coat covered in gold braid and, even more ridiculously, a top hat. Howell had such an imposing presence that rather than losing dignity in this flunky’s outfit he actually made it see...
Names that were so bad that when they dared to whisper them (bitch-cunt-whore-poet) to each other beneath the bedclothes, they were like poison in the air.
It was one of those questions you couldn’t ask in case he were to tell the truth.
If there was one thing she found more tedious than thinking about politics it was talking about politics. And
Hooligan posse of gulls wheeled noisily overhead,
[…] but her mother's death had revealed that there was no metaphor too ostentatious for grief. It was a terrible thing and demanded embellishment.
[T]he parent-child relationship was one way, you gave them all your love and they were under no obligation to pay a penny back. Of course, if they did love you then that was the icing on the cake with...
You did not need a God (Sylvie was an unconfessed atheist) to believe in sin. She