Margaret Drabble Life Quotations

Affluence was, quite simply, a question of texture ... The threadbare carpets of infancy, the coconut matting, the ill-laid linoleum, the utility furniture ... had all spoken of a life too near the bones of subsistence, too little padded, too severely worn.

How unjust life is, to make physical charm so immediately apparent or absent, when one can get away with vices untold for ever.