Margaret Drabble

Family life itself, that safest, most traditional, most approved of female choices, is not a sanctuary: It is, perpetually, a dangerous place.

When nothing is sure, everything is possible.

And there isn't any way that one can get rid of the guilt of having a nice body by saying that one can serve society with it, because that would end up with oneself as what? There simply doesn't seem to be any moral place for flesh.

Nothing fails like failure.

Nothing succeeds, they say, like success. And certainly nothing fails like failure.

The human mind can bear plenty of reality but not too much intermittent gloom.

The rare pleasure of being seen for what one is, compensates for the misery of being it.