Elizabeth Jane Howard Quotes
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Men will consider deeply before they buy a tie or choose a meal; but when it comes to throwing aside their purpose in life, possibly life itself, they do not think at all. They consent to be marshalled, controlled, exposed to unimagined shock, mutilation and death, with barely a tremor, and their reasons for complying, if indeed they have any, would comparen most shamefully with their reasons for doing anything else.
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It's all right, darling. I can't stand people who are bright-eyed and bushy-tailed at seven in the morning. Give me a girl who only gets going after ten!
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Love is neither a conditional business nor an ever-fixed mark arrangement. People always know somewhere inside them if they are not loved. No gestures, talk, conciliation, pronouncements can prevail over that deep instinctual knowledge.
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In a way, an autobiography seems to me like a household book of accounts – what has been acquired, to what purpose has it been put, was too much paid for it and did it teach you anything? How much has been learned by experience? Have I discovered where I am useful and useless, how I am nourished and starved?
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The effort of trying to turn grief into regret, to live entirely on past nourishment, even to keep the sharper parts of nostalgia credible (he found himself beginning to doubt and struggle with the intricacies of the smaller memories), and, most of all, the fearful absence of anything that could begin to take their place, had worn him down.
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You can't run from feelings, Charity. You have to face them. Otherwise your future will look just like your past.
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Sit down and tell me everything, child. Hurt feelings and hopeless despair are no match for tea and biscuits.
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I have lived my life in the slipstream of experience.
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Does breakfast in bed count as a morning workout?
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Why can't they invent a pill that will keep you from remembering someone you don't want to remember?
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It's not a luxury if you can't do without it!
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When you fall asleep after a big lunch you're really just saving up energy to work off all the calories later on.