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

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.

Parents learn a lot from their children about coping with life.

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.