“What would happen if one woman told the truth about her life?
The world would split open.”

“It was all very well, the alethiometer telling her to be truthful, but she knew what would happen if she told the whole truth. She had to tread carefully and just avoid direct lies.”

“The truth is always something that is told, not something that is known. If there were no speaking or writing, there would be no truth about anything. There would only be what is.”

“I knew enough about adults to know that if I did tell them what had happened, I would not be believed. Adults rarely seemed to believe me when I told the truth anyway. Why would they believe me about something so unlikely?”

“And if a woman
She used a life line
As something more than
Some man's servant mother wife time
Well I wonder what would happen to this world.”

“I think about what the readers would see first when they open the next page:what would jump into his or her eyes first?”

“What well-bred woman would refuse her heart to a man who had just saved her life? Not one; and gratitude is a short cut which speedily leads to love.”

“For the rest of my life I would be thinking about her. She would always be my biggest WHAT IF.”

“One should never trust a woman who tells one her real age. A woman who would tell one that would tell one anything.”

“She would follow, her dream of love, the dictates of her heart that told her he was her all in all, the only man in all the world for her for love was the master guide. Come what might she would be wild, untrammelled, free.”