Talia

“One of the worst things about people was how easily they didn’t go together.”
― Elizabeth Jane Howard, Getting It Right

“One wanted children; had them, and brought them up: and then, in spite of all the calculations of time and care, they defeated one by producing a result which seemed, to say the least, almost mathematically incorrect.”
― Elizabeth Jane Howard, The Long View

“Intense grief, like intense love, is something you can never suppress, however hard you try. There are days when I feel as though I cannot make my life stretch far enough. Life is like a piece of cloth which has to be stretched over something. Sometimes it's too big, and there's a surplus; sometimes, there's exactly the right amount you need to be happy, and sometimes there just isn't enough, and when you stretch it, it tears.”
― Sofia Tolstoy, The Diaries of Sofia Tolstoy: A Chronicle of Marriage to Leo Tolstoy and Turbulent Turn-of-the-Century Russia

“She felt she was a bottomless pit of memories, and she was only fifteen. What on earth must it be like when you reached the Duchy’s age? You’d hardly be able to think at all for them; it would be like having so much furniture in a room that there was nowhere left to move.”
― Elizabeth Jane Howard, Marking Time