E.M. Delafield · 388 pages
Rating: (3.5K votes)
“She is never alone when she has Her Books. Books, to her, are Friends. Give her Shakespeare or Jane Austen, Meredith or Hardy, and she is Lost - lost in a world of her own. She sleeps so little that most of her nights are spent reading.”
― E.M. Delafield, quote from Diary of a Provincial Lady
“Am struck by paradoxical thought that youth is by no means the happiest time of life, but that most of the rest of life is tinged by regret for its passing, and wonder what old age will feel like, in this respect. (Shall no doubt discover very shortly.)”
― E.M. Delafield, quote from Diary of a Provincial Lady
“Mucho antes de que estuviéramos a medio camino, y sabedora de que nunca llegaría a la roca, ya confiaba en que la segunda esposa de Robert fuera buena con los niños. La vizcondesa, que nadaba tranquilamente, me preguntó si estaba bien. "Oh, sí", contesté, y acto seguido me hundí.
(Duda: ¿Castigo divino?)”
― E.M. Delafield, quote from Diary of a Provincial Lady
“(Query: Is it possible to cultivate the art of conversation when living in the country all the year round?)”
― E.M. Delafield, quote from Diary of a Provincial Lady
“This suggests Query: Does Robert, perhaps, take in what I say even when he makes no reply?”
― E.M. Delafield, quote from Diary of a Provincial Lady
“(Note: Extreme sensibility of the French sometimes makes them difficult to deal with.)”
― E.M. Delafield, quote from Diary of a Provincial Lady
“I have always enjoyed watching women dress. The appeal isn't sexual. Most girls' first glimpse of private female life is watching their mothers dress and put makeup on. It makes sense that we'd find it comforting. Childhood fascinations often crystallize this way. Isn't beauty forever defined, in a sense, by the first things we found beautiful? Surely part of my pleasure results from the inundation of images that we all experience. But I also love ritual, and it is a mesmerizing one. I enjoy the ritual of dressing myself, too. It is a form of basking in a kind of femininity that I am opposed to as an ideal, but for better or worse, I think we all fetishize the female body, and intellectualization doesn't spare anyone the obsession.”
― Melissa Febos, quote from Whip Smart: A Memoir
“You had to be free in your heart. Guilt, fear, anger—they were all their own kinds of prison. You could be out in the world and still be doing time. Part of my finding that peace within myself was learning that I was strong enough to carry the load the Lord had asked me to.”
― quote from Picking Cotton: Our Memoir of Injustice and Redemption
“It was like living in a new house. I saw the undersides of tables, walked through the tangle of chair legs. It would be good to be a dog, I thought. You would feel safe surrounded by all of these leggy objects that never tried to run away.”
― Augusten Burroughs, quote from A Wolf at the Table
“I'm so glad to be grouped with the men you've seen in rotten shape. My hope is that someday I will reach the pinnacle of that appalling list.”
― Ginn Hale, quote from Wicked Gentlemen
“Do you see those white shapes?” he asked. I sucked in my breath. “What is it?” Mom shook her head. “We’re not sure yet. But, Charlotte, whatever they are, it appears that they followed us here.”
― Mara Purnhagen, quote from Past Midnight
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