"Missing rubs the soul raw."
— Sarah Dunant (Mapping the Edge)

"But anyone who has been that young knows that the great grief of love is that your body feels the most when it knows the least."
— Sarah Dunant

"Outside, the city is changing. While we have been talking of God's laws and seacrets of the earth, a cold fog has come rolling off the sea, pushing through the allys, sliding over the water, rubbing up agienst the cold stone. As I walk the street falls away behind me, the shop's blue awning lost within seconds. People move like ghosts, their voices disconnected from their bodies; as fast as they loom up they dissapear agien. The fog is so dense that by the time I have crossed toward the Merceria, I can barely see the ground under my feet or tell if the gloom is weather of the beginning of dusk."
— Sarah Dunant (In the Company of the Courtesan: A Novel)

"Obsessed? I don't know what the word means. I know there were times when I couldn't think of anything else. I used to stay in every weeknight in the hope that he might get free and call me. It felt like I had a disease I didn't want to get rid of. I suppose that's a definition of obsession, yes."
— Sarah Dunant (Mapping the Edge: A Novel)

"So if we could not have love, my husband and I, then at least I could have alchemy."
— Sarah Dunant (The Birth of Venus: A Novel)