Elizabeth Jane Howard Quotes

“A rainy day is like a lovely gift
you can sleep late and not feel guilty.”

— Elizabeth Jane Howard

You can't run from feelings, Charity. You have to face them. Otherwise your future will look just like your past.

— Elizabeth Jane Howard

I think best in a hot bath, with my head tilted back and my feet up high.

— Elizabeth Jane Howard

“I'm not lazy. I'm just really gifted, only instead of being good at music or math I'm good at sleeping late.”

— Elizabeth Jane Howard

“A massage is just like a movie, really relaxing and a total escape, except in a massage you're the star. And you don't miss anything by falling asleep!”

— Elizabeth Jane Howard

“It's better to oversleep and miss the boat than get up early and sink.”

— Elizabeth Jane Howard

“The real point of watching television is to forget that you have a brain.”

— Elizabeth Jane Howard

Does breakfast in bed count as a morning workout?

— Elizabeth Jane Howard

“Laughter is just like champagne
only without the headache afterwards.”

— Elizabeth Jane Howard

“She laughed at bad jokes, stayed out too late, and overslept too often. Charity Hill loved holidays and she hated budgets and the alarm clock.”

— Elizabeth Jane Howard

Wandering down the street in an aimless sort of way, cold too, in a dress from last night that made young men stop and stare in the street, Charity Hill found herself hating the single life for the very first time.

— Elizabeth Jane Howard

“You can't oversleep if you don't make plans to wake up early.”

— Elizabeth Jane Howard

“For a single girl in London, luck isn't always a glass slipper that fits. Sometimes luck is a splash of mud from a passing bus.”

— Elizabeth Jane Howard

Sit down and tell me everything, child. Hurt feelings and hopeless despair are no match for tea and biscuits.

— Elizabeth Jane Howard

Charity liked brandy. She liked the way it burned her throat while soothing the ache in her heart.

— Elizabeth Jane Howard

“Why can't they invent a pill that will keep you from remembering someone you don't want to remember?”

— Elizabeth Jane Howard

“It's all right, darling. I can't stand people who are bright-eyed and bushy-tailed at seven in the morning. Give me a girl who only gets going after ten!”

— Elizabeth Jane Howard

“It's not a luxury if you can't do without it!”

— Elizabeth Jane Howard

“When she was drinking his liquor and smoking his cigars, Charity couldn't help warming to Sir Humphrey. She almost forgot what a crashing bore he really was.”

— Elizabeth Jane Howard

“I've got lots of ambitions, but I only ever think of them when I'm lying around in my undies having a snooze.”

— Elizabeth Jane Howard

Lady Margaret believed in the three D's: Discipline, Desire, and Determination. But as she listened dutifully to her new employer, hiding her yawns and trying to sit up extra straight in her chair, Charity Hill began thinking of all the lovely things that began with S, such as Sleeping Late, Sex, and Shopping.

— Elizabeth Jane Howard

“Charity knew there was nothing more coarse and common than an afternoon in bed with a total stranger
but the lad installing the telephone had a grin that made her heart turn flips.”

— Elizabeth Jane Howard

Charity felt rather snoozy after the long sermon, and she was really very grateful when Reverend Meeps offered her a cup of tea. Church was not so bad when the minister remembered you were only human.

— Elizabeth Jane Howard

“What I like about limousines is they have tinted windows, so no-one can see if you're snogging in the back seat.”

— Elizabeth Jane Howard

Charity could chatter dorm-room Marxist theory with the best of them, but a single look from cool, silver-haired Lady Beddington was enough to make her tremble from head to toe.

— Elizabeth Jane Howard

“A good mystery keeps you up on Saturday night. A bad mystery puts you to sleep on Sunday afternoon. Either way, you come out ahead.”

— Elizabeth Jane Howard

Some girls have a real sexy giggle, but whenever I laugh it always comes out somewhere between a bellow and a snort!

— Elizabeth Jane Howard

Dessert doesn't count if you're sharing someone else's.

— Elizabeth Jane Howard

“Holidays were invented so single women could overeat without feeling guilty.”

— Elizabeth Jane Howard

“Sir Humphrey looked like a sleepy old hippo
and when he yawned in that big, big, hippopotamus way Charity couldn't help doing likewise.”

— Elizabeth Jane Howard

“It's natural to feel jittery around new people. But sometimes you can get over your jitters if you make a joke. So when the Swedish housekeeper brought her breakfast on a tray, Charity said something cheeky about eating Lady Margaret out of house and home. But the big red-faced woman took no notice at all. So then Charity had to look totally relaxed and unconcerned as she enjoyed her breakfast in bed, which was easy enough after the first bite. The spooky Swedish housekeeper really was a fabulous cook. And Charity believed believed in looking for the best in people.”

— Elizabeth Jane Howard

“Charity knew that she had to be up early in the morning. And she knew that a weepy, silly, ridiculously old-fashioned love story was not the thing to watch with a broken heart. Nevertheless, she watched. And wept. And was still smiling when she fell asleep at three o'clock in the morning, with the remote in her hand and the telly still going.”

— Elizabeth Jane Howard

“Charity groped for the phone, coming up with it at last and croaking "hello" in a voice that sounded exactly like a bullfrog's mating call. Which made a kind of twisted sense
last night she'd been hunting for a mate as well.”

— Elizabeth Jane Howard

“Men will consider deeply before they buy a tie or choose a meal; but when it comes to throwing aside their purpose in life, possibly life itself, they do not think at all. They consent to be marshalled, controlled, exposed to unimagined shock, mutilation and death, with barely a tremor, and their reasons for complying, if indeed they have any, would comparen most shamefully with their reasons for doing anything else.”

— Elizabeth Jane Howard

“Charity didn't mean to waste the entire afternoon. But her favorite daytime drama was on the telly. It was always the same, she thought, stretching out on the bed to watch. The sex got her interested first, and then the story. Before long she was totally hooked, and deep into the intricate plots and the glamorous goings-on. And afterwards, she just felt drained.
She was sound asleep by the time Lady Margaret came home.”

— Elizabeth Jane Howard

“The effort of trying to turn grief into regret, to live entirely on past nourishment, even to keep the sharper parts of nostalgia credible (he found himself beginning to doubt and struggle with the intricacies of the smaller memories), and, most of all, the fearful absence of anything that could begin to take their place, had worn him down.”

— Elizabeth Jane Howard

Sex on a rainy afternoon is like getting all the gloom and wetness to go away for a while. And afterwards you don't even notice if the rain's still falling.

— Elizabeth Jane Howard

When you fall asleep after a big lunch you're really just saving up energy to work off all the calories later on.

— Elizabeth Jane Howard

“Why do these big old country houses always have family portraits in the dining room? Do you really want to eat with someone's gloomy great-grandfather looking down on you?”

— Elizabeth Jane Howard

“Giving the rugged repairman the eye was one thing
but Charity had no intention of snogging away a whole rainy afternoon when she was supposed to be catching up on her work. Lady Margaret was counting on her! But then again, Lady Margaret didn't have big brown eyes and a cheeky grin.”

— Elizabeth Jane Howard

“Love is neither a conditional business nor an ever-fixed mark arrangement. People always know somewhere inside them if they are not loved. No gestures, talk, conciliation, pronouncements can prevail over that deep instinctual knowledge.”

— Elizabeth Jane Howard

“It was foolish to indulge in elaborate preconceptions: anticipation was a featherweight, doomed to compete with the inevitable, convincing bulk of reality. The trouble was that one had to face reality without knowing beforehand precisely what it was to be. One had somehow to discover and tread the hard, between the sloughs of fearing the worst and hoping for the best.”

— Elizabeth Jane Howard

“Conducting in a church in London where, he said,”

— Elizabeth Jane Howard

“Why do they call them daytime dramas, anyway? Shouldn't they be bedtime dramas? All anyone ever talks about is getting someone into bed! Plus if you're at home watching, you're probably watching in bed. And if you're like me, after an hour or two of watching all those sexy goings-on you forget the silly story entirely and fall asleep. Just like it's bedtime!”

— Elizabeth Jane Howard

“Mrs Downs, a large sad lady who described herself, to Rupert's delight, as bulky but fragile, now came four mornings a week to clean the house. She was one of those people who habitually looked on the black side of everything with a cheerfulness that bordered upon the macabre.”

— Elizabeth Jane Howard

Charity felt crumpled and wrung out after her cry, like a sponge that had gone through a week of dishes. Of course Lady Beddington said things would be better in the morning, after a good night's sleep. Charity found it was a struggle to believe her; but then it was a struggle just keeping her eyes open. By the time the guest room was ready, Charity was sprawled out face-downwards on the sofa, sound asleep, her tears already forgotten.
And that's what it means to be young, Lady Beddington thought, smiling.

— Elizabeth Jane Howard

I have lived my life in the slipstream of experience

— Elizabeth Jane Howard

“I'm not particularly keen on pity. Pity takes something away from grief. People think they're sharing it, but really they're just taking some. I prefer to keep my grief intact.”

— Elizabeth Jane Howard

“The craze of genealogy is connected with the epidemic for divorce. If we can't figure out who our living relatives are, then maybe we'll have more luck with the dead ones.”

— Elizabeth Jane Howard

“Sex is like petrol. It's a galvaniser, a wonderful fuel for starting a relationship.”

— Elizabeth Jane Howard