“She should have done science, not spent all her time with her head in novels. Novels gave you a completely false idea about life, they told lies and they implied there were endings when in reality ...”

“Amelia envisaged that between York and the royal-infested Scottish Highlands there was a grimy wasteland of derelict cranes and abandoned mills and betrayed, yet still staunch, people. Oh and moorl...”

“She could have happily lived inside any nineteenth century novel.”

“This Henry lived in Edinburgh, making him inaccessible and giving her something to do on the weekends 'Oh, just flying up to Scotland, Henry's taking me fishing,' which is the kind of thing she im...”

“If they would all sleep all the time she wouldn't mind being their mother.”

“She was a terrible mother, there was no doubt about it, but she didn't even have the strength to feel guilty.”

“The only queer people are those who don't love anybody.”

“Yeah, the whole family knows. It's no big deal. One night at dinner I said, 'Mom, you know the forbidden love that Spock has for Kirk? Well, me too.' It was easier for her to understand that way.”

“I love you. The words reverberated between them, sinking into their skin, scored onto their hearts as they staked their claims to each others bodies, surrendering themselves and possessing each oth...”

“A lady's imagination is very rapid; it jumps from admiration to love, from love to matrimony in a moment.”

“I've always said that idleness dulls the spirit. We have to keep the brain busy, or at least the hands if we don't have a brain.”

“If your workplace was somehow transplanted into the jungle and everyone was forced to survive at a very primitive level, it's safe to say that eventually your boss would rape you.”