Was it love of people?' I asked her. 'Of course no,' she snapped sharply. 'How can you love ignorant, brutish people whom you don't even know? Can anyone love filth and squalor? Or lice and rats? Who can love aching weariness, and carry on working, in spite of it? One cannot love these things. One can only love God, and through His grace come to love His people.

The shell must be broken before the bird can fly.

Whoever heard of a midwife as a literary heroine? Yet midwifery is the very stuff of drama. Every child is conceived either in love or lust, is born in pain, followed by joy or sometimes remorse. A midwife is in the thick of it, she sees it all.

That's the trouble, I can't forget him. He was everything to me, except mine.

I've loved someone since I was seventeen but I can't have him and I can't give him up. So until I can do that no one else will stand a chance.

There is a greater gift than the trust of others. That is to trust in oneself. Some might call it confidence, others name it faith. But if it makes us brave, the label doesn’t matter... for it’s the thing that frees us, to embrace life itself.

I am forced to the conclusion that modern medicine does not know it all.