- Kirsten Bjorgsen: I'm going back to Stockholm. I will live on land, and walk on grass. And she will walk on grass, and her bed will be her own.
- Trixie Franklin: Has the captain agreed to it?
- Kirsten Bjorgsen: I didn't ask him. I told him. And I would like to say he said yes because he loves me. But I think it's because he's ashamed of himself. I think he saw himself through your eyes. I saw myself through your eyes. And I was pathetic.
- Trixie Franklin: No. No. You were magnificent.
- [first lines]
- Mature Jenny: [narrating] It seems to me, gazing back across the decades, that my journey into womanhood began on the streets of East London, working as a midwife in the city's poorest quarter. I never knew an idle day, a misspent hour, a single moment without some sense of purpose. I could be bone tired and I would rally exhausted and bounce back time and again.
- Mature Jenny: [narrating] We strove to serve women, living alongside and amongst them. Men were creatures that you married, or marvelled at, or yearned for, or found somehow perplexing. Mainly, they made work for us, and we knew no rest.
- Mature Jenny: [narrating] Love cannot ease every anguish in the world but tenderly applied, it can transfigure fortunes, light up faces. Turn the tide.