Quartet in Autumn
Barbara Pym
Top 10 Best Quotes
“She had always been an unashamed reader of novels.”
“One did not drink sherry before the evening, just as one did not read a novel in the morning.”
“So many things seemed to come in plastic bags now that it was difficult to keep track of them. The main thing was not to throw it away carelessly, better still to put it away in a safe place, because there was a note printed on it which read 'To avoid danger of suffocation keep this wrapper away from babies and children'. They could have said from middle-aged and elderly persons too, who might well have an irresistible urge to suffocate themselves.”
“Letty allowed her to ramble on while she looked around the wood, remembering its autumn carpet of beech leaves and wondering if it could be the kind of place to lie down in and prepare for death when life became too much to be endured.”
“I think just a cup of tea...' There was something to be said for tea and a comfortable chat about crematoria.”
“But at least it made one realize that life still held infinite possibilities for change.”
“A room in Holmhurst was the last thing she'd come to - better to lie down in the wood under the beech leaces and the bracken and wait quietly for death.”
“If the two women feared that the coming of this date [their retirement] might give some clue to their ages, it was not an occasion for embarrassment because nobody else had been in the least interested, both of them having long ago reached ages beyond any kind of speculation.”
“Four people on the verge of retirement, each one of us living alone, and without any close relative near – that’s us.”
“Ageing, slightly mad and on the threshold of retirement, it was an uneasy combination and it was no wonder that people shied away from her or made only the most perfunctory remarks. It was difficult to imagine what her retirement would be like—impossibe and rather gruesome to speculate on it.”
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Book Keywords:
old-age, suffocation, autumn, crematoria, plastic-bags, novels, possibilities, suicide, tea, ageing, retirement, death, crematorium, hope, sherry, last-sentences, last-sentence
