“I have often wondered since at my own firmness. In that dreadful interview with my uncle I had felt, in the whirl and horror of my mind, on the very point of submitting, just as nervous people are ...”

“(...) and I tell you, Austin Ruthyn, if you won't look about and marry somebody, somebody may possibly marry you.”

“I had first thought of Milly's absurdities, to which, in description, I cannot do justice, simply because so many details have, by distance of time, escaped my recollection. But her ways and her ta...”

“You will do well to take advantage of Madame's short residence to get up your French a little... You will be glad of this, my dear, when you have reached France, where you will find they speak noth...”

“In my time first cousins did not meet like strangers. But we are learning modesty from the Americans, and old English ways are too gross for us.”

“Have not women preferred hatred to indifference, and the reputation of witchcraft, with all its penalties, to absolute insignificance?”

“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.”