“At heart, he could not abide sense in women: he liked to see them as silly, as light-headed, as vain, as open to ridicule as possible; because they were then in reality what he held them to be, and wished them to be,--inferior: toys to play with, to amuse a vacant hour and to be thrown away.”

“He was forever dwelling on his failures. He held them up to the light and examined them in minute detail, like necklaces that had tangled in a drawer.”

“He had a smug smile on his lips like he knew, even in his sleep, that women all around him were dying from love because he'd taken their hearts and hidden them where they'd never find them.”

“He did not blame them. Because in truth, that's what he did, what he was. Seduce and dominate. Charm and manipulate. A user of women. How they would scoff, Rothbury mused bitterly, if they knew that he was secretly in love with the silly little chit, spectacles and all.”

“He was like a drug and what did you do with drugs You pushed them as far away as possible.”

“He feared me as many men fear women: because their mistresses (or their wives) understand them. They are scarcely adult, some men: they wish women to understand them, and to that end they tell them all their secrets; and then, when they are properly understood, they hate their women for understanding them.”