Quotes by Margaret Drabble

About Margaret Drabble:

Dame Margaret Drabble, Lady Holroyd is an English novelist, biographer and critic.
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

She liked Christian names, she liked those who used them as a sign of easy inclusion and intimacy, but to her the use of a name remained a proclamation, an action, an event. She was not accustomed to names.

Margaret Drabble

Minor talents or failing talents ask much of those who associate with them. They suck, they cling, they sour, they devour, and they can kill their hosts. Disappointment is a deadly companion. We didn't yet know how many of us would end up in its grip...

Margaret Drabble

Auntie Phyl's last months in the care home were extra pieces. Age is unnecessary. Some of us, like my mother, are fortunate enough to die swiftly and suddenly, in full possession of our faculties and our fate, but more and more of us will be condemne...

Margaret Drabble

When nothing is sure, everything is possible.

Margaret Drabble

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

Margaret Drabble

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

Margaret Drabble

I need words and print... I need print like an addict. I could live without it, perhaps. But I hope I never have to try.

Margaret Drabble

Perhaps the rare and simple pleasure of being seen for what one is compensates for the misery of being it.

Margaret Drabble

What really annoys me are the ones who write to say, I am doing your book for my final examinations and could you please tell me what the meaning of it is. I find it just so staggering--that you're supposed to explain the meaning of your book to some...

Margaret Drabble

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

Margaret Drabble

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

Margaret Drabble

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.

Margaret Drabble

Author Bio

  • NameMargaret Drabble
  • DescriptionNovelist, biographer and critic
  • BornJune 5, 1939
  • CountryUnited Kingdom
  • ProfessionWoman Of Letters; Novelist
  • AwardsDame Commander Of The Order Of The British Empire; James Tait Black Memorial Prize; John Llewellyn Rhys Prize