DeanJean

“Eva was rather impressed that we had made all the necessary arrangements. I did not tell her that I would shortly be leaving my job, because already she had said that penniless people had no right to have children. She didn’t seem to think it was Charles’s baby — only mine, because later on, when I was upstairs putting on my coat, she kissed me quite kindly, but spoilt it by saying, ‘I shall never forgive you, Sophia, for making my son a father at twenty-one.’ I almost added, ‘And you a grandmother at forty-six.”
― Barbara Comyns, Our Spoons Came from Woolworths

“It was only then, when the man lay sleeping beside her, that Evelyn took in the whole new astonishment of her situation. She shifted very slightly away from him in her bed so that no part of her body was touching his, aware of the smell of his skin of his naked back so close beside her, so masculine and alien, an affront in a new language she couldn't read.”
― Tessa Hadley, The Party

“People drown on dry land. They are not easy to help. They are not saints. And neither, it turns out, is anyone else.”
― Darran Anderson, Inventory: A Memoir

“We tell ourselves stories about war. Of good guys and bad guys. Redemption and sacrifice. Yet the nature of conflict is such that when it is unleashed, it is almost impossible to remain good.”
― Darran Anderson, Inventory: A Memoir