Hidden Lives Quotes

“Locked up inside her was an uncomfortable amount of unhappiness, perhaps even horror, if of a sadly conventional kind, and the only way she could deal with it was by pretending it never existed - so much pretending women like my grandmother had to do. The urge in her to be respectable and above reproach was so strong, and the rules of that respectability so rigid, that it overrode all other desires.”
― Margaret Forster, Hidden Lives: A Family Memoir

“All of us, all three representatives of different generations, always have put family first but in my case, in the case of my generation, it has not been at ruinous cost. I'm not, and haven't been, crippled by the family. I don't pay an enormous emotional price for the having of one. I have been able to be myself within its confines.”
― Margaret Forster, Hidden Lives: A Family Memoir