“There's never any warning that something extraordinary is about to happen, is there?”

“The odd thing about Mama was that she liked to think of herself as a doomy sort of person, but there was a natural optimism in her that refused to be defeated, however hard she squashed it down, and I know that she never lost faith completely.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

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

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