Quotes from Sarah Waters

seen something in their poses, for, 'Spoony!

But she was used to that by now, used to this kind of waiting, that was slack as worn elastic yet had the tautness of wire.

And yet, I seemed to feel my eyes bound, too, with bands of silk. And at my throat there was a velvet collar.

I wish that, if anyone should look for faults in this, then they will find them with me, with me and my queer nature, that set me so at odds with the world and all its ordinary rules, I could not find a place in it to live and be content.

If I seemed strange, and conscious of myself, what was that to her? We were all strange, there.

They would say my nerve had failed me. They would laugh in my face! I had a certain standing. I was the daughter of a murderess.

She tells me of her journey, of the train from London—when she says the word, London, she seems conscious of the sound; I suppose she is not in the habit of naming it, of considering it a place of destination or desire.

I barely knew I had skin before I met you.

The best thing to do was to brazen it out, throw your head back, walk with a swagger...

And perhaps there is a limit to the grieving that the human heart can do. As when one adds salt to a tumbler of water, there comes a point where simply no more will be absorbed.

We have a name for your disease. We call it a hyper-aesthetic one. You have been encouraged to over-indulge yourself in literature; and have inflamed your organs of fancy.

It's a curious, wanting thing.

Being in love, you know... it's not like having a canary, in a cage. When you lose one sweetheart, you can't just go out and get another to replace her.

Why is it we can never love the people we ought to?

But, here was a curious thing. The more I tried to give up thinking of her, the more I said to myself, 'She's nothing to you', the harder I tried to pluck the idea of her out of my heart, the more she stayed there.

Why do gentlemen's voices carry so clearly, when women's are so easily stifled?

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

Your twisting is done--you have the last thread of my heart. I wonder: when the thread grows slack, will you feel it?

All unwillingly I opened my eyes - then I opened them wider, and lifted my head. The heat, my weariness, were quite forgotten. Piercing the shadows of the naked stage was a single shaft of rosy limelight, and in the centre of this there was a girl: the most marvellous girl - I knew it at once! - that I had ever seen.

Some things are so frightful that a bit of madness is the only sane response. You know that, don't you?

She was like milk - too pale, too pure, too simple. She was made to be spoiled.

but when she saw me turn to her she reached and took my hand. She took it, not to be led by me, not to be comforted; only to hold it, because it was mine.

this feeling haunts and inhabits me, like a sickness. it covers me, like skin.

She scissored the curls away, and - toms, grow easily sentimental over their haircuts, but I remember this sensation very vividly - it was not like she was cutting hair, it was as if I had a pair of wings beneath my shoulder-blades, that the flesh had all grown over, and she was slicing free...