Daily Pym

The people sitting or standing around us were all in the fresh bloom of youth; they were the young people one saw and read about but seldom met. They made a person who was only ten or so years older feel very old indeed.

— A Glass of Blessings, chapter twenty one

‘Quick, Edwin, go to her,’ said Daisy, ‘and see what you can do.’

Edwin hurried to where Sister Dew lay in a tumbled heap. In his veterinary practice he specialised in the treatment of small animals, and the sheer bulkiness of Sister Dew reminded him that his work had been with cats and pet dogs rather than with horses and cows, but he examined her ankle as best he could.

— An Unsuitable Attachment, chapter fifteen

That day the four of them went to the library, though at different times. The library assistant, if had noticed them at all, would have seen them as people who belonged together in some way. They each in turn noticed him; with his shoulder-length golden hair. Their disparaging comments on its length, its luxuriance, its general unsuitability — given the job and the circumstances — were no doubt reflections on the shortcomings of their own hair.

— Quartet in Autumn, chapter one

…she lacked the energy and initiative to find herself an occupation; she remembered the dreadful woman — ‘Ba’, was it? — she had met at the Murrays’ party and the impertinent suggestions she had made about the useful voluntary work one could do. But when Leonora came to consider them each had something wrong with it: how could she do church work when she never went near a church, or work for old people when she found them boring and physically repellent, or with handicapped children when the very thought of them was too upsetting?

— The Sweet Dove Died, chapter twenty-two

Yet if Avice’s mother were not so well looked after and preserved, if she were not allowed all the white bread, sugar, butter, cakes and puddings that her naturally depraved taste craved, if — not to mince matters or to put too fine a point on it — she were to drop down dead, the Shrubsoles would have enough money to buy a larger house. This thought, instantly stifled, had more than once occurred to Martin in the watches of the night.

— A Few Green Leaves, chapter eight

Marcia’s short, stiff, lifeless hair was uncompromisingly dyed a harsh dark brown from a bottle in the bathroom cupboard, which she had used ever since she had noticed the first white hairs some thirty years earlier. If there were now softer and more becoming ways of colouring one’s hair, Marcia was unaware of them.

— Quartet in Autumn, chapter one (submitted by Pym Society member Phillis M. Paryas)

“One has to be tough with old people,” Leonora went on, “it’s the only way — otherwise they encroach.”

— The Sweet Dove Died, chapter six (Thanks to Pym Society member Jeannette Molzer)