Margaret Drabble

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

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

When nothing is sure, everything is possible.

Too academic an education can inhibit the workings of the creative mind.

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

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

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.

Scenery can be a violent stimulant.

Nothing fails like failure.

When nothing is sure everything is possible.