The news should have terrified her, but it was difficult to be frightened of anything when she was sitting so close to Rom. 'I thought we had convinced him that I was leading a blameless life?' 'We had, till you burst out of that damnable cake.

The sisters worked from dawn to dusk. One of them was an idiot; she started shaving her legs and marrying tax inspectors, so she was no good.

Pauline kept a scrapbook into which she pasted important articles that she had cut out of the newspapers. These were about the courageous deeds that had been done by people even if they only had one leg or couldn't see or had been dropped on their heads when they were babies. 'It's to make me brave,' she'd explained to Annika.

Herr Altenburg, I can't; I have vertigo.' And Marek looked at him: 'All right - I'll get the chemist to fix me something.

Loneliness had taught Harriet that there was always someone who understood - it was just so often that they were dead, and in a book.

Just because we've never done it doesn't mean we can't do it.

They were steaming out of the station before Maia asked, 'Was it books in the trunk?' 'It was books, admitted Miss Minton. And Maia said, 'Good.