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Barbara Pym

Barbara Pym Quotes

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Famous Barbara Pym Quotes

“You could consider marrying an excellent woman?' I asked in amazement. 'But they are not for marrying.' 'You're surely not suggesting that they are for the other things?' he said, smiling. That had certainly not occurred to me and I was annoyed to find myself embarrassed. 'They are for being unmarried,' I said, 'and by that I mean a positive rather than a negative state.”

“It was the ring on the left hand that people at the Old Girls' Reunion looked for. Often, in fact nearly always, it was an uninteresting ring, sometimes no more than the plain gold band or the very smallest and dimmest of diamonds. Perhaps the husband was also of this variety, but as he was not seen at this female gathering he could only be imagined, and somehow I do not think we ever imagined the husbands to be quite so uninteresting as they probably were.”