Barbara Pym Quotes

The small things of life were often so much bigger than the great things, she decided, wondering how many writers and philosophers had said this before her, the trivial pleasures like cooking, one's home, little poems especially sad ones, solitary walks, funny things seen and overheard.

[I]t occurred to me that he might well be the kind of person who would prefer tinned salmon, though I was ashamed of the unworthy thought for I knew him to be a good man.

The new curate seemed quite a nice young man, but what a pity it was that his combinations showed, tucked carelessly into his socks, when he sat down.

'Every man should have a wife,' declared the rector firmly. 'A single clergyman is the prey of every spinster in the parish. He should marry for safety, if for no other reason.'

Oh, but it was splendid the things women were doing for men all the time, thought Jane. Making them feel, perhaps sometimes by no more than a casual glance, that they were loved and admired and desired when they were worthy of none of these things – enabling them to preen themselves and puff out their plumage like birds and bask in the sunshine of love, real or imagined, it didn't matter which.

'What do women do if they don't marry,' she mused, as if she had no idea what it could be, having been married once herself and about to marry again.

'I have to share a bathroom,' I had so often murmured, almost in shame, as if I personally had been found unworthy of a bathroom of my own.

Underrated: The six novels of Barbara Pym published between 1950 and 1961 which give an unrivalled picture of a small section of middle-class post-war England. She has a unique eye and ear for the small poignancies and comedies of everyday life.

'One hears that so many husbands coming back from the war find that their civilian clothes have been devoured by moth,' said Winifred seriously. 'That must be a dreadful shock.'

Near them stood a thin woman with purple hair and a surprised expression, as if she had not expected that it would turn out to be quite that colour.

Underrated: Barbara Pym, whose unpretentious, subtle, accomplished novels, especially Excellent Women and A Glass of Blessings, are for me the finest examples of high comedy to have appeared in England during the past seventy-five years.