“Beauty, grace, and charm my foot. It's a school for sadists with good tea-serving skills.”

“It's just a little initiation we have here at Spence - we like to torture each other. Beauty, grace, and charm my foot. It's a school for sadists with good tea-serving skills.”

“Welcome to finishing school, Gemma. Learn to embroider, serve tea, curtsy. Oh, and by the way, you might be demolished in the night by a hideous winged creature from the roof.”

“I'm floating inside my skin. I could go on floating like this for days. Right now, the real world with its heartbreak and disappointments is just a pulse against the protective membrane we've drunk ourselves into. It's somewhere outside us, waiting." A Great and Terrible Beauty, Page 141, by”

“Didn't you have any sadistic nannies who told you these tales to keep you quiet and well behaved at night? Heavens, what's to become of the Empire if governesses have lost their touch for scaring the wits out of their girls?”

“It is all I can do not to confide to the girl closest to me: "If I should die during tea - asphyxiated by my own corset - please do not let them bury me in such a hideous dress or I shall come back to haunt you.”

“I've never done acid, finding it hard to go willingly to a place that could be frightening, hellish, and totally beyond my control. A place much like high school.”