“...soon dinner will run into bed-time, and we shall all eat reclining like the ancient Romans--about whose digestion, you know, I have often wondered. Whether a dose of rhubabrb might have made a difference to Nero or Caligula is a question you might ponder, my dear, next time you go through your Tacitus.”

“But we disposable women have to be realistic in this life, you know. Else we get itchy and discontented and start contemplating the kitchen knife and wondering whether it wouldn't look nicer between someone's shoulder-blades.”

“Emily’s world fascinates and disturbs: in it you can touch thick Yorkshire speech, and moorland rain slants across your mind with a smell of mossy limestone and yet you are not at home, you might almost be in Gondal or Angria except the towers and the dungeons are of the spirit, the dungeons especially; and sometimes when Emily reads out in her low, almost guttural voice Charlotte wants to run but can’t think why or where she would run to.”

“You have made him live.”

“None of us like to think we are silly. But all must acknowledge that they are capable of silliness, from time to time”

“I have never understood why a woman must have a man to take her into dinner.”

“She simply cannot let go of love- and who can blame that? Is it not the hardest thing in the world to relinquish, once you have it?”