Sublime

Until the long day was done at last and Hilda returned with a hole in her skirt where she had caught it in Mrs Manfred’s carpet sweeper, and Uncle Mishak changed into his pyjamas in his cupboard of a room and said, ‘Good night, Marianne,’ as he had said every night for eighteen years and not stopped saying when she died.

The journey of life has long and tedious stretches, step by step, day by day, without anything exciting happening, but memory is made up of the unexpected events that mark your course.

Nothing now in the weeds and litter to interest her, and her whole life consisting of her own disappointment: helpless against the arrival of her bad temper, she kicked a crushed Red Stripe can at her feet.

I suppose one of the reasons we’re all able to continue to exist for our allotted span in this green and blue vale of tears is that there is always, however remote it might seem, the possibility of change.

Lady Duff Twysden, a character right out of a very good English novel who had lost her way. Her look was original, her chic was original, and God knows her speech and her capacity for drink were all original.

People were always talking about the loneliness of old age, but Penelope relished her solitude. She had never lived alone before, and at first had found it strange, but gradually had learned to accept it as a blessing and to indulge herself in all sorts of reprehensible ways, like getting up when she felt like it, scratching herself if she itched,