“Jane decided he was certainly beautiful, with brown eyes and a well-shaped nose. It is a refreshing thing for an ordinary-looking woman to look at a beautiful man occasionally and Jane gave herself up to contemplation.”

“Prudence's flat was in the kind of block where Jane imagined people might be found dead, though she had never said this to Prudence herself; it seemed rather a macabre fancy and not one to be confided to an unmarried woman living alone.”

“I wonder if he kissed her, Jane thought. She was surprised to hear that they had had what seemed to be quite an intelligent conversation, for she had never found Fabian very much good in that line. She had a theory that this was why he tended to make love to woman - because he couldn't really think of much to say to them.”

“Jane felt that he would write from the depths of a wretchedness that would not necessarily be insincere because its outward signs were so theatrical. Pesumably attractive men and probably woman too must always be suffering in this way; they must so often have to reject and cast aside love, and perhaps even practice did not always make them ruthless and cold-blooded enough to do it without feeling any qualms.”

“Mr Boultbee seems to have done us a good turn," said Nicholas. "I gather his sermons were not much liked."No; we got very tired of Africa and I didn't feel that what he told us rang quite true. He said that one African chief had had a thousand wives. I found that a little difficult to believe."Well, we know what men are," said Jane casually, surprised that Miss Dogget, with her insistence on men only wanting one thing, should have found this difficult to believe.”

“Oh, but it was splendid the things women were doing for men all the time, thought Jane. Making them feel, perhaps sometimes by no more than a casual glance, that they were loved and admired and desired when they were worthy of none of these things - enabling them to preen themselves and puff out their plumage like birds and bask in the sunshine of love, real or imagined, it didn't matter which.”

“Let me hasten to add that I am not at all like Jane Eyre, who must have given hope to so many plain women who tell their stories in the first person, nor have I ever thought of myself as being like her.”