Then I knew how good you were, to come to me, after all you had seen. The first hour they had me there, do you know what frightened me the most? Oh, it was a...

It’s a curious, wanting thing.

Don’t panic. Midway through writing a novel, I have regularly experienced moments of bowel-curdling terror, as I contemplate the drivel on the screen before me and see beyond it, in quick succession, the derisive reviews,...

It was heavy, and I staggered when I lifted it; but it was strangely satifying to have a real burden upon my shoulders – a kind of counterweight to my terrible heaviness of heart.

She scissored the curls away, and – toms, grow easily sentimental over their haircuts, but I remember this sensation very vividly – it was not like she was cutting hair, it was as if I...

Undressing myself had no fun in it, now I had undressed her.

And perhaps there is a limit to the grieving that the human heart can do. As when one adds salt to a tumbler of water, there comes a point where simply no more will be...

One time, two years ago, I took a draught of morphia, meaning to end my life. My mother found me before the life was ended, the doctor drew the poison from my stomach with a...

I felt that thread that had come between us, tugging, tugging at my heart—so hard, it hurt me.

I had a very clear vision, of Selina with her hair about her shoulders, a crimson hat upon her head, a velvet coat, ice-skates – I must have been remembering some picture. I imagined myself...

I give myself up to darkness; and wish I may never again be required to lift my head to the light.

But it’s the simple and the good that are meant to suffer in this world—ain’t it, though!

But, here was a curious thing. The more I tried to give up thinking of her, the more I said to myself, ‘She’s nothing to you’, the harder I tried to pluck the idea of...

I had loved Kitty -I would always love Kitty. But I had lived with her a kind of queer half-life, hiding from my own true self. Since then I had refused to love at all,...

She closed her eyes and let the rain fall on her face, and after another second, I could not have said what were raindrops, and what tears.

I’m sorry you aren’t as brave as you thought you were. But don’t punish me because of it.

It is a world that is made of love. Did you think there is only the kind of love your sister has for her husband? Did you think there must be here, a man with...

In short, Nance, even was you going to the very devil himself, your mother and I would rather see you fly from us in joy, than stay with us in sorrow – and grow, maybe,...

With every step I took away from her, the movement at my heart and between my legs grew more defined: I felt like a ventriloquist, locking his protesting dolls in to a trunk.

She shook her head, and closed her eyes. I felt her weariness then, and with it, my own. I felt it dark and heavy upon me, darker and heavier than any drug they ever gave...

She ran, and leaned to the wall, until her face was close to mine and her breath came on me.I said, ‘I’ll do it. I’ll go with you. I love you, and I cannot give...

The vase was placed upon my desk, and there were orange-blossoms in it—orange-blossoms, in an English winter!

But the more I think it, the more I want her, the more my desire rises and swells.

Her corset was long, with a busk of steel; her waist, as I think I have said, was narrow: the kind of waist the doctors speak against, that gives a girl an illness. Her crinoline...

She said, ‘It is filled with all the words for how I want you.

They might be kind, I thought. They might be sensible and good. They will not be like you. But I did not say it. I knew it would mean nothing to her. I said something...

Now I have more freedom than I have ever had at any time in my life, and I do only the things I always have. They were empty before, but Selina has given a meaning...

And for a moment I though I would tell her, that it would be the easiest and the slightest thing imaginable- that after all, if anyone would understand it, she would. That I need only...

For she was the only one, of all of them, to have spared me a pleasant word; and suddenly I longed for time to pass, not for its own sake, but as it would take...

It made me giddy. It made me blush, worse than before. It was like liquor. It made me drunk. I drew away. When her breath came now upon my mouth, it came very cold. My...

The dark has a eased a little. There has been a street-lamp burning, that has lit the threads of the bleached net scarf hung at the window, now it is put out. The light turns...

We fitted together like the two halves of an oyster-shell. I was Narcissus, embracing the pond in which I was about to drown. However much we had to hide our love, however guarded we had...

Don’t you be thinking,’ she says, ‘on things that are done and can’t be changed. All right, dear girl? You think of the time to come.

She raised her head when she heard my step, and her gaze met my own, over the matron’s dipping shoulder, and her eyes grew bright. I knew then how hard it had been to keep,...

The morning has broken – I had thought of the morning like an egg that had split with a crack and was spreading. Before us lay all the green of the green country of England,...

Tricky was a plain-faced man with a very handsome voice – a voice like the sound of a clarinet, at once liquid and penetrating, and lovely to listen to.

Why do gentlemen’s voices carry so clearly, when women’s are so easily stifled?

PIGEON MY ARSE!

Their friendship sometimes struck Frances as being like a piece of soap-like a piece of ancient kitchen soap that had got worn to the shape of her hand, but which had been dropped to the...

She said that that was the disadvantage of bringing creatures into the house: one grew used to them, and then, one had the upset of their loss.

The day had begun to feel tinny: a pretend day, a dream day, that for some unaccountable reason she had to go on and on with as if it were real.

But you cannot know the glimpses I have had, you cannot know there is another, dazzling place, that seems to welcome me! I have been led to it, Helen, by someone marvellous and strange. You...