'this spiral / of making while unmaking while / the world goes round' -- Mary Jo Salter, 'Young Girl Peeling Apples'

I was a long bodice partly sewn to a skirt, a hem picking / up everything

How perilous is it to choose / not to love the life we're shown? -- 'The Badgers,' Seamus Heaney

Beautiful Girls is not a book for the faint-hearted: it will survive as testament to poetry's force in overcoming - Chris McCabe

Dear Friend, you must not deem me light if, as I lie and muse to-night, I give a smile and not a sigh to thoughts of our Philosophy. - Amy Levy, 'Philosophy'

And I could see that child's one eye which seemed to laugh, and say with glee: 'what caused my death you'll never know, perhaps my mother murdered me.' - W.H. Davies - 'The Inquest'

A frail, dead, new-born lamb, ghostly and pitiful and white a blot upon the night, the moon's dropped child! - Charlotte Mew, 'Fame'

Oh! let each mental feature proclaim the labour of the mind, and leave your charms to NATURE. - Mary Robinson, 'Female Fashions For 1799'