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101 " She felt she was a bottomless pit of memories, and she was only fifteen. What on earth must it be like when you reached the Duchy’s age? You’d hardly be able to think at all for them; it would be like having so much furniture in a room that there was nowhere left to move. "
― Elizabeth Jane Howard , Marking Time (Cazalet Chronicles, #2)
102 " But over the years, of pain and distaste for what her mother had once called 'the horrible side of married life', of lonely days filled with aimless pursuits or downright boredom, of pregnancies, nurses, servants and the ordering of endless meals, it had come to seem as though she had given up of everything for not very much. She had journeyed towards this conclusion by stages hardly perceptible to herself, disguising discontent with some new activity which, as she was a perfectionist, would quickly absorb her. But when she had mastered the art, or the craft, or the technique involved in whatever it was, she realised that her boredom was intact and was simply waiting for her to stop playing with a loom, a musical instrument, a philosophy, a language, a charity or a sport and return to recognising the essential futility of her life. Then, bereft of distracton, she would relapse into a kind of despair as each pursuit betrayed her, failing to provide the raison d'être that had been her reason for taking it up in the first place. "
― Elizabeth Jane Howard
103 " that small minority who honestly did not care for themselves in that way, who could sincerely say that money was unimportant to them, almost always had no dependants. "
― Elizabeth Jane Howard , All Change (Cazalet Chronicles, #5)
104 " La notte era il momento peggiore. Si coricava, tentava di leggere un po’, poi si rendeva conto che nulla di quanto leggeva le restava in testa; allora prendeva un sonnifero, spegneva la luce, cercava di riprodurre nella mente una musica che le piaceva, che la rassicurava. Ma la musica veniva subito spazzata via da una ridda feroce di ricordi e sensazioni, momenti passati con lui che si congelavano in scene salienti, come un fermo immagine di un film. "
105 " La gente crede che le cose dette siano più facili da cancellare, mentre in realtà il tono di voce, i movimenti e le espressioni le fissano in modo indelebile. "
106 " Quanto impariamo dagli errori? Dipende da quanto siamo disposti ad imparare. "
107 " One wanted children; had them, and brought them up: and then, in spite of all the calculations of time and care, they defeated one by producing a result which seemed, to say the least, almost mathematically incorrect. "
― Elizabeth Jane Howard , The Long View
108 " Non riesco ad immaginare quali potrebbero essere le mie impressioni nel leggere una biografia, o un semplice articolo biografico, scritti da un estraneo. Suppongo che non possano dare una soddisfazione completa, perché ci si aspetta che la personalità sia abbellita dalla parola scritta. Forse si tratta semplicemente della forza intrinseca della scrittura, del peso irrefutabile della parola scritta in quanto tale, mentre la parola detta vive nella spontaneità di una relazione immediata con un interlocutore. Per questo la scrittura deve tenere a bada il suo potere, il valore delle parole deve rarefarsi, affinché il lettore riesca a digerirlo. "