Cindy

“My idea of absolute happiness is to sit in a hot garden all, reading, or writing, utterly safe in the knowledge that the person I love will come home to me in the evening. Every evening.'

'You are a romantic, Edith,' repeated Mr Neville, with a smile.

'It is you who are wrong,' she replied. 'I have been listening to that particular accusation for most of my life. I am not a romantic. I am a domestic animal. I do not sigh and yearn for extravagant displays of passion, for the grand affair, the world well lost for love. I know all that, and know that it leaves you lonely. No, what I crave is the simplicity of routine. An evening walk, arm in arm, in fine weather. A game of cards. Time for idle talk. Preparing a meal together.”
― Anita Brookner, Hotel du Lac

“I began drinking because the thought that I was drinking gave me a kind of identity: each time I poured myself a brandy in the deserted afternoon I could say to myself 'I am a woman who drinks.”
― Penelope Mortimer, The Pumpkin Eater

“It is a common delusion that you make things better by talking about them.”
― Rose Macaulay

“Given his own amorality, he could quite easily have come to terms with her criminal tendencies, but he could never, being the snob that he was, ever have overlooked her roots.”
― Elizabeth Palmer, Scarlet Angel