“One would never write a single word if one knew the horrors that lay ahead,’ agreed Charlotte.‘But if you sell copies by the sackload, you may well forget the horrors,’ I agreed quickly.”

“Would it ever, ever leave? I had become used to the ache now; it was with me all the time, and never seemed to lessen. Time was no healer, I decided, but it was a great accommodator.”

“Men, I thought, were more trouble than they were worth. Really, one should stick to books where one sees the hero coming a mile off.”

“Mama was amazing like that; I spent most of my teenage years assuming that she knew nothing about me, and all of my twenties realizing that she knew everything.”

“I didn't hear you come in. I was away with the ghosts of my beautiful youth.”

“If I could take people out of their heads for a little while, if I could give them a dose of fantasy, that was all that mattered. You can't put a price on escape.”

“Like all intelligent people, she functions very well in extreme disorder.”