The one certain way for a woman to hold a man is to leave him for religion. - Muriel Spark

It is impossible to repent of love. The sin of love does not exist.

I am putting old heads on your young shoulders," Miss Brodie had told them at that time, "and all my pupils are the crème de la crème.

A life like mine annoys most people; they go to their jobs every day, attend to things, give orders, pummel typewriters, and get two or three weeks off every year, and it vexes them to see someone else not bothering to do these things and yet getting away with it, not starving, being lucky as they call it.