I’ll be your friend in daylight. I’ll treat you as a comrade in every gas-lit ballroom. But alone, under moonlight, I’ll not pretend that I want you for anything but mine.

Over the years, everyone stumbles. That's why I'll be here for you — and you'll be there for me. I don't expect perfection. I want you, and you're a thousand times better.

Maybe that’s what I have been looking for. When storms and rockslides threaten, I am looking for someone who will hold on to me and not let go.

Jenny: You didn't leave?Gareth: Of course I left. I was hungry, and I couldn't find anything to eat. I bought a loaf and some cheese. And oranges. Wait. You mean you thought I had left. Without saying a word to you. Would I do that?(Jenny nodded)Gareth: Damn it. You know better than most I'm no good at these things but even I am not that bad. Really, Jenny. Why would you believe such a thing of me?Jenny: I don't know, Maybe because you once told me all you wanted from me was a good shag?Gareth: I said that? (he looked surprised, then contemplative. Then apparently, he remembered and winced) God. I said that? Why did you even touch me?

Jenny: But surely Lord Blakely could not abandon his estates for so long.Gareth: No. Lord Blakely could not. Not unless he had someone he could trust to run his estates in his absence. And Lord Blakely...Well, Lord Blakely did not trust anyone.Jenny: Lord Blakely is talking about himself in the third person, past tense. Its disturbing.

You could make me say it again," he whispered. "Make me say it always. Make me say it so often that you never have cause to doubt. I love you.

Libraries are the future of reading. When the economy is down, we need to make it easier for people to buy and read books for free, not harder. It is stupid to sacrifice tomorrow’s book buyers for today’s dollars, especially when it’s obvious that the source in question doesn’t have any more dollars to give you.

Friendship was a concept men bandied about to save face when they were rejected.

This is why people are so hard to understand. I cannot even estimate their gravitational pull.

If a man ever lets you know that he sees marriage as a trap, and women as nothing but scheming connivers, you are by no means to marry him. Any man that sees your entire sex in so harsh a light has nothing to offer you.

She looked like a woman talking about astronomical parallax, and that made her brilliantly beautiful.

He knew taht many of his compatriots avoided marriage at all costs. They saw matrimony as an annoyance, a wife as another person who would nag and prod. But when he repeated his vows, he heard "as long as we both shall life" and he hoped.

I think that's when I understood that you only ruined my life because my life needed ruining. Because the life you rejected demanded that I spend all my time telling my daughter to be less and my son to be more.

One mustn’t justify day-to-day morality with extraordinary circumstances. Otherwise, we would all feel free to rape and murder at the drop of a cat.

A man must claim responsibility for his own temptation, and not pin it on the woman who arouses him. It’s a gown, Sir Mark. Not even one of my more daring ones.

I hated you,” she continued, “because you have done nothing more than abide by rules that every gentlewoman follows every day of her life. Yet for this prosaic feat, you are feted and cosseted as if you were a hero.” She felt nothing as she spoke, but still her voice shook. Her hands were trembling, too. “I hate that if a woman missteps once, she is condemned forever, and yet the men who follow you can tie a simple ribbon to their hats after years of debauchery, and pass themselves off as upright pillars of society.

Men touch their horses to calm them,” she said distantly. “They caress their falcons to remind them that they are bound. Touch smacks of ownership, and I am weary of being a possession.

What would one do if one were forced to choose between saving an innocent child’s life or engaging in unchaste behavior? This is, after all, the choice that some unfortunate women are put to—sell their bodies, or see their children starve.

She wagged a finger at him. “You’re mispronouncing that word.” “Your pardon?” He groped, trying to remember what he’d said. “Suffragette? How does one pronounce it, then?” “Suffragette,” she said, “is pronounced with an exclamation point at the end. Like this: ‘Huzzah! Suffragettes!

When someone else's safety and acceptance in society is on the line, your personal discomfort comes in a very distant second.

He wasn't good with this sort of thing - with the back-and-forth dance between man and woman. He wasn't even sure if they were dancing, or if she was merely being polite.

I keep everything hidden because there's nothing about my true self that anyone likes. I'm not difficult, Sebastian. I'm the easiest person around. I don't belong, and I spend all my time pretending I do. Sometimes I get weary of it, and that makes me angry.It's not fair to the people around me when I lose my temper. I say awful things when I'm angry. But it's not fair to me, either, that I was made this way.

His past followed him around as faithfully as his shadow.

I’d tell you to fetch a match, but you have always had your own spark.

Her lips found his and a stab of exquisite desire shot through him. This is what he's been waiting for all this time. Not a stolen embrace. A gift, freely given. One that he would keep forever in some small part of his soul.

I fear that one day I will no longer understand desperation, and with that, I will slowly stop listening to what others have to say.

Three quarters of respectable England hates you.""Half," Sebastian replied with a smile. "It's really only half. Judging by my correspondence, it may be as little as forty-eight percent. And of those, only a small number want to cause me bodily harm. The rest just wish to have me gagged or thrown in prison.

If it must be done, it's best done bravely.

...having you as a friend wasn’t second prize. It wasn’t something to chafe against. It was an honor.

Sir Mark Turner," he said. "I speak with the tongues of a thousand angels. Butterflies follow me wherever I go. Birds sing when I take a breath.

I don’t know what you’re talking about, but any organization that claims you for a member doesn’t get to call itself sinister, whether you’re left-handed or not. I would be insulted to be offered membership in such a namby-pamby organization. It would be like the Archbishop of Canterbury calling a select club of his compatriots ‘Bad, Bad Bishops’.”Marshall sniggered.“Watch out for the clergy,” Edward said. “They’re absolutely wild. Sometimes they have an extra biscuit at tea.

This was met with a long pause. “Are you really left-handed?” Mr. Marshall asked.“No. I’ve just been pretending to use my left hand my entire life because I enjoy never being able to work scissors properly.

I assumed I would be better off telling you about this, rather than waiting for the entire thing to blow up in my face.

Miss Edmonton: I don't even know where to start. It's too horrifying to even speak of.Jenny: Nonsense. Let's start with the basics. What did your aunt tell you?Miss Edmonton: My aunt said that my husband will come into my room and pull my skirt up. And then he'll put himself inside of me. She said it hurts. She suggested I hold my tongue and pretend I am somewhere else until he is done.Jenny: Yes. I should think it would hurt if you did it that way. Good heavens.

Miranda shook her head slowly. 'Good heavens. That's quite an act you put on.'He drew himself up haughtily. 'I beg your pardon.''An act,' Miranda repeated. 'Stand as tall as you like, and frown at me all you wish. I saw you just now. You were feeding cats.''So I was. And do you make something of that?''You,' Miranda said daringly, 'have a kind heart.'He turned away from her, the tails of his greatcoat swirling about him. 'Don't enlarge too much upon the matter. The cats were hungry. I had food. This seemed to be a problem with a ready solution. It's not kindness to solve problems; it's efficiency.''I stand corrected. You have an efficient heart.

I'm not broken,' he repeated. 'Although at the moment . . . ' This was what came of violating the sentimentality quota. Everything he kept bottled inside him came out. He shut his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose. 'At the moment,' he muttered numbly, 'I may be coming a bit unraveled.

Do not pollute my perfectly acceptable figurative speech with irrelevant facts!

The dog looked up in entreaty. Liquid brown eyes begged: Take me with you. I’ll be good. Oh, the lies that dogs told.

If I had married, there is much I would not have learned of myself. This has been hard and painful and horrible. But I've learned that I'm stronger than hard, better than pain, and that with enough luck, horrible can go away.

I'm not difficult," Violet said. "I'm simple. I like good books and clever conversation and being left alone much of the time. How does that make me difficult? I make sense? I don't talk about my feelings, of course, but then, I don't want to." She shrugged. "So that's reasonable."Sebastian smiled despite himself, a smile that felt bitter even to him. "God, no. Not feelings. Heaven forbid that you have anything so messy.""I have feelings." She spoke stiffly. "I just don't talk about them. What's the point? Talking never changes them.

If I’ve learned anything, it's that we know next to nothing. Disease is a mystery. Health is inscrutable. The body itself is scarcely understood; we can only examine the secrets of the dead. And in all that dark ignorance, we're sometimes granted a rare moment of illumination. The truth is a gift.

Why did you do it? Give up everything to raise another man's son?'His father did look up at that. 'I didn't raise another man's son,' he said sharply. 'I raised my own.

I adhere to the law of chastity because I don’t believe in pushing women. That’s what it means to be a man. I don’t hurt others simply to make myself feel superior. Gossip can ruin a woman as surely as unchaste behavior. True men don’t indulge in either. We don’t need to.

When someone falls,” Mark said, “you don’t throw her back down in the dirt. You offer her a hand up. It’s the Christian thing to do.

Let them say what they wish behind your back. You need only be strong enough that they don't say it to your face.