“A woman's reputation is her worth... IT is the way it is. You may hate me for saying so, but there is the truth. Do you not remember that this is how our mother died? She would still be here and Father would be well and none of this would ever have happened if she had simply lived according to the time-trusted codes of society.'Perhaps it proved impossible. Perhaps she could not fit within so tight a corset. Perhaps I am the same.'One does not have to like the rules, Gemma. But one does need to adhere to them. That is what makes civilization. Do you think I agree with every... decision made by my superiors”

“Why do I doubt her? Perhaps she is just very sensitive, and hypersensitive people are false when others doubt them; they waver. And one thinks them insincere. Yet I want to believe her. At the same time it does not seem so very important that she should love me. It is not her role. I am so filled with my love of her. And at the same time I feel that I am dying. Our love would be death. The embrace of imaginings.”

“I felt sorry for Mary-Emma and all she was going through, every day waking up to something new. Though maybe that was what childhood was. But I couldn't quite recall that being the case for me. And perhaps she would grow up with a sense that incompetence was all around here, and it was entirely possible I would be instrumental in that. She would grow up with love, but no sense that the people who loved her knew what they were doing - the opposite of my childhood - and so she would become suspicious of people, suspicious of love and the worth of it. Which in the end, well, would be a lot like me. So perhaps it didn't matter what happened to you as a girl: you ended up the same.”

“How does the story really go?Does she ever cross your mind?Does she ever steal your nights?Is she still a part of you?Do you ever wish she were still by your side?And what would you do?If she walked up here tomorrow And told you that she loved you?Would you drop it all and run to her?Would you tell her you love her too?Or would you simply send her home?And tell her you’ve moved on?Tell me, Buddy, what would you do?”

“Her heart--is given him, with all its love and truth. She would joyfully die with him, or better than that, die for him. She knows he has failings, but she thinks they have grown up through his being like one cast away, for the want of something to trust in, and care for, and think well of. And she says, that lady rich and beautiful that I can never come near, 'Only put me in that empty place, only try how little I mind myself, only prove what a world of things I will do and bear for you, and I hope that you might even come to be so much better than you are, through me who am so much worse, and hardly worth the thinking of beside you.”

“Why don’t you tell me your name?” “No.” “Very well. Your rank?” “What would a woman understand of rank?” “What does my sex have to do with my understanding?” “As I have said, women are not warriors.” “Perhaps in your society they aren’t, but in Frewyn we do very well for ourselves.”