“He promised her that he would give her everything, everything she wanted, as men in love always do. And she trusted him despite herself, as women in love always do.”

“I can't sleep, I can't eat, I can't do anything but think about him. At night I dream of him, all day I wait to see him, and when I do see him my heart turns over and I think I will faint with desire.”

“I would know you anywhere for my true love. Whoever I was and whoever you were, I would know you at once for my true love.”

“I have given my word that only death will take me from you.”

“When they see us dance. When they see how you look at me. When they see how I smile at you.”

“I have seen sights and travelled in countries you cannot imagine. I have been afraid and I have been in danger, and I have never for one moment thought that I would throw myself at at a man for his...”

“She was of the stuff of which great men's mothers are made. She was indispensable to high generation, feared at tea-parties, hated in shops, and loved at crises.”

“For we think back through our mothers if we are women.”

“She would be quiet at first. Then she would say a word about something small, something she had noticed, and then another word, and another, each one flung out like a little piece of sand, one from...”

“Don't laugh at the spinsters, dear girls, for often very tender, tragic romances are hidden away in the hearts that beat so quietly under the sober gowns, and many silent sacrifices of youth, healt...”

“No black woman writer in this culture can write "too much". Indeed, no woman writer can write "too much"...No woman has ever written enough.”

“When you reduce a woman to writing, she makes you think of a thousand other women”

“I would venture to guess that Anon, who wrote so many poems without signing them, was often a woman.”