“Dear designer of questionable intent,Please send me a photo of yourself. Please be wearing the knitted pants that you designed. It's not that I don't believe that there is anyone out there thing enough to wear horizontally stripped trousers knit from chunky wool, it's just that I would like to know whether you are deliberately cruel or whether you are the one woman these would look really great on.”

“It's much easier than I thought it would be."Most things in knitting are, really.”

“Would you do something for me? Please? Would you just picture your life for me? Thirty years from now, forty years from now? What's it look like? If it's with that guy, go. Go! I lost you once, I think I could do it again, if I thought it's what you really wanted.”

“I was like, 'Dude, make me look bad. Please. I want to look ugly. I want to wear orange pants.”

“Gemma, you see how it is. They've planned our entire lives, from what we shall wear to whom we shall marry and where we shall live. It's one lump of sugar in your tea whether you like it or not and you'd best smile even if you're dying deep inside. We're like pretty horses, and just as on horses, they mean to put blinders on us so we can't look left or right but only straight ahead where they would lead. Please, please, please, Gemma, let's not die inside before we have to.”

“If you were ever dumped after knitting a guy a sweater, consider the possibility that the problem was with the sweater, not you. The recipient probably took one look at the thing, imagined a lifetime of having to pretend to like (and wear) this sweater and others of its like, and saw no choice but to flee into the night”