“I think about my mother singing after lunch on a Summer afternoon, twirling in blue dress across the floor of her dressing room”

“My mother drove me to Boston and bought me a beautiful blue dress that touched the floor, spilling out in waves; I wore the ocean in the shape of a girl.”

“Your red dress,’ she said, and laughed.But I looked at the dress on the floor and it was as if the fire had spread across the room. It was beautiful and it reminded me of something I must do. I will remember I thought. I will remember quite soon now.”

“Susannah Buxton, costume designer: These three dresses demonstrate well the different ways in which we brought the costumes together for the show. Mary's dress was made for her, Edith's was hired - it was previously used in the Merchant-Ivory production of A Room With A View - and Sybil's is an original Edwardian summer dress.”

“Yesterday I had a woman ask me what kind of salad dressings we have. I told her we have sesame soy dressing, spicy lime vinaigrette, and blue cheese. She made a face and asked, 'Is that all?' 'Yes,' I told her, 'those are all of our dressings.' 'Don't you have any other dressings?' he says. I mean, what the hell? What does she think? That I'm holding out? I was tempted to say, "No, we actually have an entirely different assortment of dressings that I don't tell people about the first time they ask, because they don't deserve these great secret dressings. But now that you have proven your worth, I will show you to the VIP room, where the array of salad dressings will dazzle and delight you.”

“And I'd started thinking about my mother's last weeks--the way she'd drifted listlessly about the house in her dressing gown, cigarettes in one hand, glass of something strong-smelling in the other. ”