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55ba98c
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If you've not been loved as a child, you don't know how to love a child.
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Jane Gardam |
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1b1f038
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The astounding thing about Paula is that she looks like Tess of the D'Urbervilles, and she sounds like Tess of the D'Urbervilles, and she thinks like Tess of the D'Urbervilles and yet she is so different from Tess of the D'Urbervilles. I expect she comes from a different part of Dorset.
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Jane Gardam |
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adca160
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Present us with a silver cup for something when you're a filthy rich lawyer, I dare say? Yes. You'll be a lawyer. Magnificent memory. Sense of logic, no imagination and no brains.
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Jane Gardam |
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c81cd46
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But there's time yet. The old women of the tribe have almost always been the wiser. If they keep their marbles long enough. Old men forget--or tend to reminisce, and reminisce falsely and sententiously as a rule. We are often very silly in our middle years but we tend to improve
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Jane Gardam |
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41f7e15
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For years of our lives the days pass waywardly, featureless, without meaning, without particular happiness or unhappiness. Then, like turning over a tapestry when you have only known the back of it, there is spread the pattern.
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life
patterns
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Jane Gardam |
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5a6ac9f
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She wanted to take his hand. Her hardest task now as she grew older in the Ministry was to deal with her longing to be touched - hugged, stroked by anyone, any human being - a friend, a lover, a child or even (and here she scented danger) a servant. Of either sex. She prayed about it, asking that God's encircling arms would bring comfort. They did not
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Jane Gardam |
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aa171f0
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Judges live with shadows behind them.
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Jane Gardam |
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91b3956
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Thank you," he said. "I'm glad you enjoyed it. If there is anyone here this afternoon whom I have convinced that books are meant to be enjoyed, that English is nothing to do with duty, that it has nothing to do with school - with exercises and homework and ticks and crosses - then I am a happy man." He turned away but then he turned back again and he suddenly simply shouted, he bellowed "To hell with school," he cried. "To hell with school...
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reading
english
school
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Jane Gardam |
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66e388f
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So the years passed and everyone grew old and Nell's husband died and Hilda grew to be a large, angry sort of woman very high up in local government. When Nell was eighty-four Hilda retired and they went to live at a sea-side place where Hilda had had meaningful holidays during the menopause with a woman called Audrey, now dead.
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Jane Gardam |
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d20aabe
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His colleagues at the Bar called him Filth, but not out of irony. It was because he was considered to be the source of the old joke, Failed In London Try Hong Kong. It was said that he had fled the London Bar, very young, very poor, on a sudden whim just after the War, and had done magnificently well in Hong Kong from the start. Being a modest man, they said, he had called himself a parvenu, a fraud, a carefree spirit. Filth in fact was no ..
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hong-kong
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Jane Gardam |
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e84ce92
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Amy planted a glass of brandy beside the bride's cornflakes.
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Jane Gardam |
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096eb9d
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The landing stage stood on its high crooked stilts with only one person watching the boat disappear round the bend of the river--a girl of twelve called Ada, the wet-nurse's eldest child. As
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Jane Gardam |
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1915e8d
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The Titans were gone. They had clashed their last.
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Jane Gardam |
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a184d2b
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He has not the faintest idea that I am ugly and we are very happy together.
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humor
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Jane Gardam |
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2e469cc
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I was seeing something I didn't understand and did not want to. No I wasn't. I was seeing something I had always understood and wanted to understand better.
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humor
growing-up
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Jane Gardam |
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38e825e
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Christianity is supposed to be all about love but it's utterly useless when you're love.
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religion
love
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Jane Gardam |
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ad6b9f1
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I was quite enchanted with myself. I had always thought I had very strong views on sexual morality. I found I had nothing of the kind.
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coming-of-age
sexuality
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Jane Gardam |