Margaret Drabble
Margaret Drabble
Dame Margaret Drabble, Lady Holroyd DBE FRSL, is an English novelist, biographer, and critic...
class people
What foolsmiddle-classgirls are to expect other people to respect the same gods as themselves and E M Forster.
people efficient flexible
Why can't people be both flexible and efficient?
travel discovery people
There are some people who cannot get onto a train without imagining that they are about to voyage into the significant unknown; as though the notion of movement were inseparably connected with the notion of discovery, as though each displacement of the body were a displacement of the soul.
teaching book people
I've always thought that very few people grow old as admirably as academics. At least books never let them down.
book people vixens
The women are always vixens or monsters. They can't just be normal people in the book.
expectations people needs
How extraordinary people are, that they get themselves into such situations where they go on doing what they dislike doing, and have no need or obligation to do, simply because it seems to be expected.
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
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.
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.