منال

“That was why she had had to come here, to the desert. This clear, terrible light would show her what she was. Would show her the truth of all the things she hadn't wanted to look at—the things that, really, she had known all along.”
― Mary Westmacott, Absent in the Spring

“You can take it from me, Averil, that a man who's not doing the work he wants to do—the work he was made to do—is only half a man. I tell you as surely as I'm standing here, that if you take Rupert Cargill away from his work and make it impossible for him to go on with that work, the day will come when you will have to stand by and see the man you love unhappy, unfulfilled—old before his time—tired and disheartened—only living with half his life. And if you think your love, or any woman's love, can make up to him for that, then I tell you plainly that you're a damned sentimental little fool.”
― Mary Westmacott, Absent in the Spring

“I’ve always suspected that a sense of humour is a kind of parlour trick we civilized folk have taught ourselves as an insurance against disillusionment.”
― Mary Westmacott, The Rose and the Yew Tree

“What is the real truth of a human creature who can appear so differently to different people?'
Robert, who seldom joined in our conversations, moved restlessly and said rather unexpectedly:
'But isn't that just the point? People do appear differently to different people. So do things. Trees, for instance, or the sea. Two painters would give you an entirely different idea of St Loo harbour.'
'You mean one painter would paint it naturalistically and another symbolically?'
Robert shook his head rather wearily. He hated talking about painting. He never could find the words to express what he meant.
'No,' he said. 'They'd actually see it differently. Probably—I don't know—you pick out of everything the things in it which are significant to you.”
― Mary Westmacott, The Rose and the Yew Tree