Helen Simonson quotes:

We are all small-minded people, creeping about the earth grubbing for our own advantage and making the very mistakes for which we want to humiliate our neighbors.

Look, the truth belongs to the guy who's best at sticking to his story,' said Ferguson.

He opened his mouth to say that she looked extremely beautiful and deserved armfuls of roses, but the words were lost in committee somewhere, shuffled aside by the parts of his head that worked full-time at avoiding ridicule.

Only sometimes when we pick and choose among the rules we discover later that we have set aside something precious in the process.

At our age, surely there are better things to sustain us, to sustain a marriage, than the brief flame of passion? You are mistaken, Ernest, she said at last. There is only the passionate spark. Without it, two people living together may be lonelier than if they lived quite alone.

America wielded her huge power in the world with a brash confidence that reminded him of a toddler who has got hold of a hammer. Major Pettigrew

He cursed himself for having assumed the weather would be sunny. Perhaps it was the result of evolution, he thought--some adaptive gene that allowed the English to go on making blithe outdoor plans in the face of almost certain rain.

But it's not enough to be in love. It's about how you spend your days, what you do together, who you choose as friends, and most of all it's what work you do ... Better to break both our hearts now than watch them wither away over time.

I know something of shame...How can we not all feel it? We are all small-minded people, creeping about the earth grubbing for our own adventure and making the very mistakes for which we want to humiliate our neighbors......I think we wake up every day with high intentions and by dusk we have routinely fallen short. Sometimes I think God created the darkness just so he didn't have to look at us all the time.

I tell myself it does not matter what one reads-favorite authors, particular themes-as long as we read something. It is not even important to own the books.

My neighbor Alice Pierce is fond of singing folk music to her garden plants. Thinks it makes them grow or something. The Major had often wondered how a wailing rendition of 'Greensleeves' would encourage greater raspberry production but Alice insisted that it worked far better than chemical fertilizers, and she did produce several kinds of fruit in pie-worthy quantitites. No sense of pitch, but plenty of enthusiasm, he added.

Passion is all very well, but it wouldn't do to spill the tea.

The world is full of small ignorances. We must all do our best to ignore them and thereby keep them small, don't you think

You cannot run away from what's in your heart.

Life does often get in the way of one's reading.