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“Her egg, when it arrives, is perfection. The yolk is soft, the white is firm. How is it, how is your egg, my angel, tenderly asks the kindly not-so-young woman. Perfect, says Fran, with emphasis. Perfect, she repeats. Yes, perfection. She reads the headlines and the lead story, moves to the continuation of the story on page two. She feels a powerful surge of happiness, a sense that all is well with the world, that she is in the right place at the right time, for this moment in time. She has had a good night, comfortable, pain-free, in a big white wide premier bed. And now she is at one with these munching people, she enjoys their enjoyment, as she spoons her chaste and perfect egg. And she is at one, through her almost-reliable friend of a newspaper, with the miscellaneous events of the turning world.”
― Margaret Drabble, The Dark Flood Rises

“It’s been a very long two months. She’d been a lot younger, two months ago. She’d been walking steadily on a plateau, for years, through her sixties into her seventies, but now she’s suddenly taken a step down. That’s what happens. She knows all about it. She’s been warned many times about this downwards step, this lower shelf. It’s not a cliff of fall, but it’s a descent to a new kind of plateau, to a lower level. You hope to stay there on the flat for a few more years, but you may not be so lucky.”
― Margaret Drabble, The Dark Flood Rises

“Fran is proud of her perceptions. She still enjoys perceiving. When she ceases to enjoy perceiving, she’ll know she is about to be dead.”
― Margaret Drabble, The Dark Flood Rises

“Increasingly the case.”
― Cath Staincliffe, Fire on the Fells