- Vera Curtis: If Captain Dreyfuss walked in wearing only a brocade dressing gown and flung himself on the bed, you'd talk to him about literature?
- Rose Coyne: Don't tease. I know I can't have that one bit of him and still say I love Michael, I know that. I'm a fool, not an idiot. But if you take it away from me, if you take away the chance that, in a different universe in a different set of circumstances, we could have swapped souls. "Always stay with me, take any shape..." Oh, I used to remember every word of this.
- [searches for book to quote from]
- Rose Coyne: "Be with me always, take any form, drive me mad. Only do not leave me in this abyss where I cannot find you! Oh, God! It is unutterable! I cannot live without my life! I cannot live without my soul!" If you take it away... and I believe you could, Vera. You're prettier and vivacious and funny and single and... Oh, God. I'm asking you not to, aren't I?
- Vera Curtis: It's all right.
- Rose Coyne: It's not. It's mean and selfish and entirely wrong but if you do that for me...
- Vera Curtis: "The curse has come upon me", cried the Lady of Shallot.
- Captain Ronald Dreyfuss: Rose, I've wanted to tell you all through lunch. I was ambushed by your sister. That's why I brought Tillie along. I didn't want Vera to get the wrong idea and instead...
- Rose Coyne: Stop! Please, please don't tell me that. I thought I was over you. I made a promise to get over you and then I broke it and then I thought I'd been saved despite myself and now... now I'm lost again.
- Rose Coyne: I don't want Dreyfuss, if that's what you're suggesting, at least not in that way.
- Vera Curtis: God! Is there any other way to want him?
- Rose Coyne: I just want... the bit of Michael I thought I was getting when I married him.
- Vera Curtis: You're losing me a bit here, Rose.
- Rose Coyne: I saw Michael as Heathcliff, romantic that I was. And then, what I had taken to be brooding and enigmatic turned out to be quiet and stolid. And that was all right. I love my quiet, stolid, reliable, farmer. I got used to it and I've been doing just fine and then... the waters of the lake parted and out stepped Heathcliff.
- Vera Curtis: Which is when you spotted his literary leanings?
- Rose Coyne: It's a metaphor, Vera. Don't be mean. He seemed to offer all the things I was missing in Michael. All the... danger, all the broodingness, all the enigma... and he quoted Tennyson to me in the shop.
- Vera Curtis: Gosh.
- Rose Coyne: He looked me in the eye and he said, "I am half sick of shadows."
- Vera Curtis: And are you?
- Rose Coyne: Sometimes I am, Vera.
- Vera Curtis: Sick enough to consider adultery?
- Rose Coyne: No! I don't want to sleep with him. I just want the bit of Michael I thought I was getting in Michael.
- Vera Curtis: If Captain Dreyfuss walked in wearing only a brocade dressing gown and flung himself on the bed, you'd talk to him about literature?
- Rose Coyne: Don't tease. I know I can't have that one bit of him and still say I love Michael, I know that. I'm a fool, not an idiot. But if you take it away from me, if you take away the chance that, in a different universe in a different set of circumstances, we could have swapped souls. "Always stay with me, take any shape..." Oh, I used to remember every word of this.
- [searches for book to quote from]
- Rose Coyne: "Be with me always, take any form, drive me mad. Only do not leave me in this abyss where I cannot find you! Oh, God! It is unutterable! I cannot live without my life! I cannot live without my soul!" If you take it away... and I believe you could, Vera. You're prettier and vivacious and funny and single and... Oh, God. I'm asking you not to, aren't I?
- Vera Curtis: It's all right.
- Rose Coyne: It's not. It's mean and selfish and entirely wrong but if you do that for me...
- Vera Curtis: "The curse has come upon me", cried the Lady of Shallot.