Aino

“When I see her,” I said, “it’s like - I don’t know what it’s like. It’s like I never saw anything at all before. It’s like I am filling up, like a wine-glass when it’s filled with wine. I watch the acts before her and they are like nothing - they’re like dust. Then she walks on the stage and - she is so pretty; and her suit is so nice; and her voice is so sweet… She makes me want to smile and weep, at once. She makes me sore, here.” I placed a hand upon my chest, upon the breast-bone. “I never saw a girl like her before. I never knew that there were girls like her…” My voice became a trembling whisper then, and I found that I could say no more. There was another silence. I opened my eyes and looked at Alice - and knew at once that I shouldn’t have spoken; that I should have been as dumb and as cunning with her as with the rest of them. There was a look on her face - it was not ambiguous at all now - a look of mingled shock, and nervousness, and embarrassment or shame. I had said too much. I felt as if my admiration for Kitty Butler had lit a beacon inside me, and opening my unguarded mouth had sent a shaft of light into the darkened room, illuminating all. I had said too much - but it was that, or say nothing.”
― Sarah Waters, Tipping the Velvet

“clad not exactly as a boy but, rather confusingly, as the boy I would have been, had I been more of a girl”
― Sarah Waters, Tipping the Velvet

“What does it say?" I said, when I had. She said, "It is filled with all the words for how I want you...Look.”
― Sarah Waters, Fingersmith

“You smell,' she began, slowly and wonderingly, 'like -'
'Like a herring!'I said bitterly. My cheeks were hot now and very red; there were tears, almost, in my eyes. I think she saw my confusion and was sorry for it.
'Not at all like a herring,' she said gently.'But perhaps, maybe, like a mermaid...”
― Sarah Waters, Tipping the Velvet