“I realised that one might love him secretly with no hope of encouragement, which can be very enjoyable for the young or inexperienced.”
― Barbara Pym, Excellent Women

“Perhaps there can be too much making of cups of tea, I thought, as I watched Miss Statham filling the heavy teapot. Did we really need a cup of tea? I even said as much to Miss Statham and she looked at me with a hurt, almost angry look, 'Do we need tea? she echoed. 'But Miss Lathbury...' She sounded puzzled and distressed and I began to realise that my question had struck at something deep and fundamental. It was the kind of question that starts a landslide in the mind. I mumbled something about making a joke and that of course one needed tea always, at every hour of the day or night.”
― Barbara Pym, Excellent Women

“My thoughts went round and round and it occurred to me that if I ever wrote a novel it would be of the 'stream of consciousness' type and deal with an hour in the life of a woman at the sink.”
― Barbara Pym, Excellent Women

“I pulled myself up and told myself to stop these ridiculous thoughts, wondering why it is that we can never stop trying to analyse the motives of people who have no personal interest in us, in the vain hope of finding that perhaps they may have just a little after all.”
― Barbara Pym, Excellent Women

“The burden of keeping three people in toilet paper seemed to me rather a heavy one.”
― Barbara Pym, Excellent Women

“Virtue is an excellent thing and we should all strive after it, but it can sometimes be a little depressing.”
― Barbara Pym, Excellent Women

“Let me hasten to add that I am not at all like Jane Eyre, who must have given hope to so many plain women who tell their stories in the first person, nor have I ever thought of myself as being like her.”
― Barbara Pym, Excellent Women

“I stretched out my hand towards the little bookshelf where I kept cookery and devotional books, the most comfortable bedside reading.”
― Barbara Pym, Excellent Women

“I was so astonished that I could think of nothing to say, but wondered irrelevantly if I was to be caught with a teapot in my hand on every dramatic occasion.”
― Barbara Pym, Excellent Women

“I hope you don’t mind tea in mugs,’ she said, coming in with a tray. ‘I told you I was a slut.”
― Barbara Pym, Excellent Women

“You know Mildred would never do anything wrong or foolish. I reflected a little sadly that this was only too true and hoped I did not appear too much that kind of person to others. Virtue is an excellent thing and we should all strive after it, but it can sometimes be a little depressing.”
― Barbara Pym, Excellent Women

“Perhaps long spaghetti is the kind of thing that ought to be eaten quite alone with nobody to watch one’s struggles.”
― Barbara Pym, Excellent Women

“...I told myself that, after all, life was like that for most of us - the small unpleasantness rather than the great tragedies; the little useless longings rather than the great renunciations and dramatic love affairs of history or fiction.”
― Barbara Pym, Excellent Women

“There are some things too dreadful to be revealed, and it is even more dreadful how, in spite of our better instincts,we long to know about them.”
― Barbara Pym, Excellent Women

“Surely many a romance must have been nipped in the bud by sitting opposite somebody eating spaghetti?”
― Barbara Pym, Excellent Women

“We, my dear Mildred, are the observers of life. Let other people get married by all means, the more the merrier. . . . Let Dora marry if she likes. She hasn't your talent for observation.”
― Barbara Pym, Excellent Women

“After all, life was like that for most of us – the small unpleasantnesses rather than the great tragedies; the little useless longings rather than the great renunciations and dramatic love affairs of history or fiction.”
― Barbara Pym, Excellent Women

“They've moved me to a new office and I don't like it at all. Different pigeons come to the window.”
― Barbara Pym, Excellent Women

“One wouldn't believe there could be so many people, and one must love them all.”
― Barbara Pym, Excellent Women

“For I had observed that men did not usually do things unless they liked doing them.”
― Barbara Pym, Excellent Women

“My thoughts went round and round and it occurred to me that if I ever wrote a novel it would be of the 'stream of consciousness' type and deal with an hour in the life of a woman at the sink. I felt resentful and bitter towards Helena and Rocky and even towards Julian, though I had to admit that nobody had compelled me to wash these dishes or to tidy this kitchen. It was the fussy spinster in me, the Martha who could not comfortably sit and make conversation when she knew that yesterday's unwashed dishes were still in the sink.”
― Barbara Pym, Excellent Women

“When we reached the bus-stop we were a long way behind in the queue and when the bus came it took only half a dozen people. I noticed a group of priests looking down on us from the upper deck and I felt that somehow the Pope and his Dogmas had triumphed after all.”
― Barbara Pym, Excellent Women

“Once you get into the habit of falling in love you will find that it happens quite often and means less and less.”
― Barbara Pym, Excellent Women

“Oh, yes, men are very simple and obvious in some ways, you know. They generally react in the way one would expect and it is often rather a cowardly way.”
― Barbara Pym, Excellent Women

“But now respectable elderly women do not need to excuse themselves for buying brandy or even gin, though it is quite likely that some still do and perhaps one may hope that they always will.”
― Barbara Pym, Excellent Women

“I forebore to remark that women like me really expected very little - nothing, almost.”
― Barbara Pym, Excellent Women

“Mimosa did lose its first freshness too quickly to be worth buying and I must not allow myself to have feelings, but must only observe the effects of other people's.”
― Barbara Pym, Excellent Women

“I suppose an unmarried woman just over thirty, who lives alone and has no apparent ties, must expect to find herself involved or interested in other people's business, and if she is also a clergyman's daughter then one might really say that there is no hope for her.”
― Barbara Pym, Excellent Women

“Well, then, we may as well find somewhere to have tea. After spiritual comes bodily refreshment.”
― Barbara Pym, Excellent Women

“I have often wondered whether it is really a good thing to be honest by nature and upbringing; certainly it is not a good thing socially, for I feel sure that the tea-party would have been more successful had I not explained that the tea was really Indian which I had unfortunately made too weak.”
― Barbara Pym, Excellent Women