“Ambition has but one reward for all: A little power, a little transient fame, a grave to rest in, and a fading name!”

“Self-expression is the dominant necessity of human nature.”

“Whenever she imagined her child, grown up without interference from a judgemental world, she imagined its male and female halves as complementing each other, and as being secretly, almost magically powerful.”

“This was a passage in which everyone moved and was unfathomable, which was how Thomasina saw people. She was not a person who froze someone's character in her mind, calling this one egotistical and that one not nearly confident enough and another one truthful or untruthful. To Thomasina people were rivers, always ready to move from one state of being into another. It was not fair, she felt, to treat people as if they were finished beings. Everyone was always becoming and unbecoming.”

“But all sudden things come from a deep study of conversion -- they are sudden only on the surface.”

“You see Miss Gertrude is a genius. And a genius is a genius. So what if no one understands a word she writes. Some day they might.”

“Her library is a meeting place for all who love books. They discuss matters of the world and matters of the spirit.”