Lily

“No, I’m not,’ I said ungraciously, for nobody really likes to be called a dear. There is something so very faint and dull about it.”
― Barbara Pym, Excellent Women

“To one thing I have made up my mind. If we find out that Mina must be a vampire in the end, then she shall not go into that unknown and terrible land alone. I suppose it is thus that in old times one vampire meant many. Just as their hideous bodies could only rest in sacred earth, so the holiest love was the recruiting sergeant for their ghastly ranks.”
― Bram Stroker, Dracula

“Prudence disliked being called ‘Miss Bates’; if she resembled any character in fiction, it was certainly not poor silly Miss Bates.”
― Barbara Pym, Jane and Prudence

“The airport reminded Leamas of the war: machines, half hidden in the fog, waiting patiently for their masters; the resonant voices and their echoes, the sudden shout and the incongruous clip of a girl’s heels on a stone floor; the roar of an engine that might have been at your elbow.”
― John le Carré, The Spy Who Came in From the Cold