Margaret Drabble
Margaret Drabble
Dame Margaret Drabble, Lady Holroyd DBE FRSL, is an English novelist, biographer, and critic...
temptation laptops machines
I have switched on this modern laptop machine. And I have told myself that I must resist the temptation to start playing solitaire upon it.
english-novelist misery pleasure rare seen
The rare pleasure of being seen for what one is, compensates for the misery of being it.
affluence bones coconut furniture life near question quite spoken texture utility
Affluence was, quite simply, a question of texture ... The threadbare carpets of infancy, the coconut matting, the ill-laid linoleum, the utility furniture ... had all spoken of a life too near the bones of subsistence, too little padded, too severely worn.
family choices female
Family life itself, that safest, most traditional, most approved of female choices, is not a sanctuary: It is, perpetually, a dangerous place.
country mean tired
England's not a bad country? It's just a mean, cold, ugly, divided, tired, clapped-out, post-imperial, post- industrial slag-heap covered in polystyrene hamburger cartons. 286
class people
What foolsmiddle-classgirls are to expect other people to respect the same gods as themselves and E M Forster.
positive baby morning
I actually remember feeling delight, at two o'clock in the morning, when the baby woke for his feed, because I so longed to have another look at him.
succeed failing
Nothing succeeds, they say, like success. And certainly nothing fails like failure.
garden banking alive
I confidently predict the collapse of capitalism and the beginning of history. Something will go wrong in the machinery that converts money into money, the banking system will collapse totally, and we will be left having to barter to stay alive. Those who can dig in their garden will have a better chance than the rest. I'll be all right; I've got a few veg.
mother memories home
Auntie Phyl's last months in the care home were extra pieces. Age is unnecessary. Some of us, like my mother, are fortunate enough to die swiftly and suddenly, in full possession of our faculties and our fate, but more and more of us will be condemned to linger, at the mercy of anxious or indifferent relatives, careless strangers, unwanted medical interventions, increasing debility, incontinence, memory loss. We live too long, but, like the sibyl hanging in her basket in the cave at Cumae, we find it hard to die.
people efficient flexible
Why can't people be both flexible and efficient?
discovery play would-be
There would be more genuine rejoicing at the discovery of a complete new novel by Jane Austen than any other literary discovery, short of a new major play by Shakespeare.
children past years
The middle years, caught between children and parents, free of neither: the past stretches back too densely, it is too thickly populated, the future has not yet thinned out.
men forever trying
Men and women can never be close. They can hardly speak to one another in the same language. But are compelled, forever, to try, and therefore even in defeat there is no peace.