“But then she often felt like this lately. The world seemed full of transparent frauds that only she could see through. She was forever shouting from the hustings of honesty, though if any honesty were directed at her she ran from it horrified. And she knew it, laughed at herself for it, wretchedly. She was all to pieces.”

“What did she love Shelley for? His reckless spontaneity -- like this. His helpless generous nature -- like this. His treatment of her as a reasonable human being and not a trembling little rose -- and so on. If she loved him for these things, could she hate him for them? Could she?”

“I must try to be charitable, Caroline thought: probably she doesn't mean to sound as if she is continually translating from Latin.”

“No amount of parental protectiveness could overcome the fact that she was very ready to be dazzled.”

“So this, Harriet thought, gazing at her black-clad reflection, was what bearing up looked like. The eyes in the mirror stared at her, somehow, while fixing themselves far away.Bearing up, then, must be this: the feeling of perfect frozen stillness, so that to raise your hand was a wrenching and unnatural event. It was not being able to sleep or eat, and the small placid tone in which she heard herself decline the food. It was the presentiment that there must be a crack or a hole somewhere at hand down which she was to throw and extinguish herself, since there must surely be something provided to make this bearable.”

“She sincerely wishes success, for her new life, and intends that no failure of effort, temper, or spirits on her part will jeopardise it.”

“And what does she mean by love, anyway? People use that word and mean all sorts of things by it.”