“She's always looking for poetry and passion and sensitivity, the whole Romantic kitchen. I live on a rather simpler diet.' 'Prose and pudding?''I don't expect attractive men necessarily to have attractive souls.”

“There are some men who are consoled by the idea that there are women less attractive than their wives; and others who are haunted by the knowledge that there are more attractive.”

“But she finally had the good sense to see that a long, dull and predictable future was an expensive price to pay for the satisfaction of a passing sexual attraction.”

“Nice girl, dear boy.""Oh . . ." I shrugged. "You know.""Most attractive.""Cheaper than central heating.""I'm sure.”

“Under this swarm of waspish self-inquiries he began to feel sorry for himself - a brilliant man trapped, a Byron tamed; and his mind wandered back to Sarah, to visual images, attempts to recollect that face, that mouth, that generous mouth. Undoubtedly it awoke some memory in him, too tenuous, perhaps too general, to trace to any source in his past; but it unsettled him and haunted him, by calling to some hidden self he hardly knew existed. He said it to himself: It is the stupidest thing, but that girl attracts me. It seemed clear to him that it was not Sarah in herself who attracted him - how could she, he was betrothed - but some emotion, some possibility she symbolized. She made him aware of a deprivation. His future had always seemed to him of vast potential; and now suddenly it was a fixed voyage to a known place. She had reminded him of that.”

“I knew I would always want to go on living with myself, however hollow I became, however diseased.”

“I am Emma Woodhouse. I feel for her, of her and in her. I have a different sort of snobbism, but I understand her snobbism. Her priggishness. I admire it. I know she does wrong things, she tries to organize other people's lives, she can't see Mr Knightley is a man in a million. She's temporarily silly, yet all the time one knows she's basically intelligent. Creative, determined to set the highest standards. A real human being.”