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“In the weeks that had passed since she had met Rupert Stonebird at the vicarage her interest in him had deepened, mainly because she had not seen him again and had therefore been able to build up a more satisfactory picture of him than if she had been able to check with reality.”
― Barbara Pym, An Unsuitable Attachment

“Oh, this coming back to an empty house,' Rupert thought, when he had seen her safely up to her door. People - though perhaps it was only women - seemed to make so much of it. As if life itself were not as empty as the house one was coming back to.”
― Barbara Pym, An Unsuitable Attachment

“She had now reached an age when one starts looking for a husband rather more systematically than one does at nineteen or even at twenty-one.”
― Barbara Pym, An Unsuitable Attachment

“She saw herself perhaps as an Elizabeth Bowen heroine - for one did not openly identify oneself with Jane Austen's heroines - and 'To The North' was her favourite novel.”
― Barbara Pym, An Unsuitable Attachment

“Robina Fairfax's mouth opened in a smile which revealed teeth that could only have been her own, so variously coloured and oddly shaped were they.”
― Barbara Pym, An Unsuitable Attachment

“The day comes in the life of every single man living alone when he must give a dinner party, however unpretentious, and that day had now arrived for Rupert Stonebird.”
― Barbara Pym, An Unsuitable Attachment

“Well, some books are destined never to be read,' said Mervyn. 'Its's the natural order of things.'
Like women who are destined never to marry, though Ianthe.”
― Barbara Pym, An Unsuitable Attachment

“However romantically ill John might look, it seemed that he had nothing worse than an unromantic cold.”
― Barbara Pym, An Unsuitable Attachment

“Although invariably kind and courteous he had the air of seeming not to be particularly interested in human beings â€� a somewhat doubtful quality in a parish priest, though it had its advantages.”
― Barbara Pym, An Unsuitable Attachment

“Such a nice couple they made, Sister Dew thought, seeing him return alone to his own house. She wondered if she should take him one of the steak and kidney pies she had baked that morning, but then â€� with unusual delicacy â€� judged it to be not quite the moment. And of course there was no question of taking one to Miss Broome â€� one did not take cooked food to lone women in the same way as to lone men.”
― Barbara Pym, An Unsuitable Attachment

“At least he would be taking away a pot of his favourite jelly, which was a great deal more than one usually got out of trying to interfere in other people's business.”
― Barbara Pym, An Unsuitable Attachment

“A youngish woman of about thirty-five who had come in to shelter froma heavy shower of rain, pricked up her ears and looked away from the book she had not been reading. To realize that two men could apparently be quarrelling almost publicly over a woman in this unchivalrous age sent her on her way with new hope.”
― Barbara Pym, An Unsuitable Attachment

“Oh the benison of it, she thought, for she seemed to need comfort now, not only because she was tired after the journey and far away from John, but because she had admitted to herself that she loved him, had let her love sweep over her like a kind of illness, 'giving in' to flu, conscious only of the present moment.”
― Barbara Pym, An Unsuitable Attachment

“come of it?”
― Barbara Pym, An Unsuitable Attachment

“[T]heir cats will be looked after too -- one only hopes Daisy won't put in more food for them than for the humans.'

Faustina [the cat] looked up from her saucer, her dark face made all the more reproachful by its beard of milk.”
― Barbara Pym, An Unsuitable Attachment

“Take an apostle spoon,' Edwin Pettigrew had said, in that calm way that inspired so much confidence, making it all sound so easy.  And certainly one would have thought that a vicarage was the one place where one could be sure of finding plenty of apostle spoons.  Trying to hold Faustina firmly under one arm, Sophia rummaged in the silver drawer but could not find one.  Then she remembered the coffee spoons that had been a wedding present and were kept in a satin-lined case.  Surely those were apostle spoons?  They looked something like them, but then she realized that they were miniature replicas of the coronation anointing spoon â€� not so unsuitable, really, for with a jerk of her head Faustina sent the spoonful of liquid paraffin running down her face and brindled front so that she had, in a sense, anointed herself with oil.

Sophia let out a cry of exasperation as the cat jumped to the ground and stalked away.  Who would ever have thought that a miniature anointing spoon could have contained so much, she asked herself, for her hands and the front of her skirt seemed to be covered with liquid paraffin.”
― Barbara Pym, An Unsuitable Attachment

“Whenever [Daisy] entered a café she always felt obliged to choose a table where a coloured man or woman was already sitting, so that they should not feel slighted in any way.  Looking around her, she saw a table for four with an African already at it.  Then she noticed that a clergyman, also bearing a tray, was making for the same table, but she managed to get there before him and put her bag down on the chair next to her to prevent him from sitting down.  One never knew â€� he might be a Roman Catholic or Oxford Group: it did not occur to her that he too might be trying to show the black man that there was no colour bar here.”
― Barbara Pym, An Unsuitable Attachment

“It’s all over,â€� she said. ‘Wasn’t it dreadful, I almost hoped somebody might stand up at the back of the church and forbid the marriage â€� like in Jane Eyre â€� and expose John as an impostor. I wanted it to happen, and not only for Ianthe’s good.â€� Sophia bowed her head, a little ashamed of having confessed so much to Rupert. John was not an impostor, or no more of one than are most of the men who promise to be something they cannot possibly be.”
― Barbara Pym, An Unsuitable Attachment

“Rupert hardly knew what to say. If only he could take her to bed with him, he thought as they approached the pensione, so much might be smoothed out there. But perhaps it was just as well that circumstances made it impossible at this moment, for that might bring about even deeper complications.”
― Barbara Pym, An Unsuitable Attachment

“It was a colleague, Everard Bone, who with his wife Mildred was to be one of the guests at the dinner party that evening.”
― Barbara Pym, An Unsuitable Attachment

“..'this young man is quite unsuitable for Ianthe.'
'Ianthe?' he said suddenly realizing who Sophia was talking about. 'What does she want to get married for? Isn't she quite happy as she is in her charming little house?'
'No, that doesn't seem to be enough,' said Sophia. 'We've both had this picture of her which so pleasing and comfortable and all the time she's been wanting something more.”
― Barbara Pym, An Unsuitable Attachment