“But if you were Charlotte, and you had been feeling that life was some cosmic joke that had no punchline, and in the space of a moment you had gone from being Charlotte-without-a-kitten to being Charlotte-with-a-kitten, you too would have found it nothing short of remarkable.”

“Charlotte Palmer is no sillier than Harriet Smith; and yet, how intolerable we should find it to see and hear as much of Charlotte as we do of Harriet! And would Miss Bates have been endurable if she had been presented in the mood and manners of Sense and Sensibility? ”

“I'm an orphan now, thought Charlotte. No matter how old you are, when your parents are gone, you are alone - an orphan.”

“Charlotte slammed the paper down onto her desk with an exclamation of rage. "Aloysius Starkweather is the most stuborn, hypocritical, obstinate, degenerate-" She broke off, clearly fighting for control of her temper. Tessa had never seen Charlotte's mouth so firmly set into a hard line."Would you like a thesaurus?" Will inquired.”

“It is a very inconvenient habit of kittens (Alice had once made the remark) that whatever you say to them, they always purr.”

“[Charlotte Bronte] had thought of every maneuver for circumventing those stony obstructions of wives who would not remove themselves.”