“Emily’s world fascinates and disturbs: in it you can touch thick Yorkshire speech, and moorland rain slants across your mind with a smell of mossy limestone and yet you are not at home, you might almost be in Gondal or Angria except the towers and the dungeons are of the spirit, the dungeons especially; and sometimes when Emily reads out in her low, almost guttural voice Charlotte wants to run but can’t think why or where she would run to.”

“So this, Harriet thought, gazing at her black-clad reflection, was what bearing up looked like. The eyes in the mirror stared at her, somehow, while fixing themselves far”

“Everything about everybody was very soon known by everybody else.”

“One hesitates to open a new chapter when the old one is not resolved.”

“I am afraid I shall disappoint people's expectations dreadfully.”

“No expectations mean there is no risk of disappointment.”

“Everyone has something of the spiti that animates the artist”

“It is painful to see someone suffering what you must be suffering- watching someone you love be so cruelly hurt.”

“Curious creatures we mortals are-how we do not know what we want, or how to get it if we do.”

“It is so important to think for yourself.”

“It is our feelings that guide us and they can never lead us wrong”