Status Updates From A Perfect Woman

"There is in the mere act of living when it's shared at the lowest level something that can keep people going and make them feel their value, which, boring as it is, is what we want to feel - without stepping on the gas and running people down." This book just gained more stars.

"[We want] quiet little sins, not ending in suicide or murder, quiet little virtues that no one takes too seriously, quiet little jokes that you don't see at once, quiet little episodes touched with fantasy that leave you where you started .... and you mustn't be too brilliant at it either, or you will make people feel inferior. The lowest common denominator, that's your aim...."

"What we want now [in literature] . . . is a different sort of report - a good report of humanity in general - not the individual's screech of pain, we aren't interested in that, but in another sort of noise, a cheerful communal murmur, the sort of noise the rooks make in springtime."

"All that self-pity.... He really ought to snap out of it! After the war it doesn't cut any ice. Our private feelings matter to us, of course, where should we be without them.? To us they are as important as they ever were. But they're not a subject for fiction any longer....not now, we've all heard much louder noises, flying bombs, high-explosive bombs, V.2 bombs, atom bombs, and soon may hear the hydrogen bomb!"

"Love is its own torturer; and, like cruder tortures, it makes its vims want to tell the truth - the truth about itself. It is by nature self betraying; if nothing else, the eyes give it away." With Hartley's touch, an otherwise lightweight romance with humorous potential turns into something more.

The title and cover caught my eye. A chance meeting of two strangers on a train starts this off at speed.