Quotes from Sarah Waters

I opened a newspaper this morning: a bishop was sounding off about "the shame of the German". Why doesn't anyone write a piece on "the shame of the Englishman"?---the ordinary hard-working Englishman, who since the war has had to watch his property and income vanishing like so much smoke?

I have seemed to see our kisses there sometimes, I've seen them hanging in the curtains

Oh, just look at him! Like a great big turnip, isn't he? We're hoping he'll grow into his head. And his big brother there was just the opposite... Oh, his head was that small, you could've darned your stocking on it!

Dainty's clever with a needle, though she seems so rough— don't she? That's just her way. She was what you would say, not brought up, but dragged up. But she is kind at her heart.

rooms seemed changed. I took to

felt that little quickening. It was just as I imagine a woman must feel, when the baby within her gives its first kick. Does it matter if I feel that, that is so small, and silent, and secret?

The people had fallen silent at the striking of the clock, the coming of the chaplain; now I heard them all start up with hisses and with hoots— that, I knew, was for the hangman. I heard the very spreading of the sound about the crowd, like oil on water.

Only when the little charade was nearly complete did Frances understand what it was all about. The spot at which Lilian had been grasping lay just above her heart. She had been drawing an imaginary stake from it.

Everything has changed. Nothing has changed, at all. She has put back my flesh; but flesh will close, will seal, will scar and harden.

why must people of that class always reveal so much of themselves? A few more minutes and she would have shown us her varicose veins.

We glide, softly, in silence, into our dark and separate hells.

Can't people do hurtful things, sometimes, and not even know they're doing them?

And what will your sister do if her husband should die, and she should take another? Who will she fly to then, when she has crossed the spheres? For she will fly to someone, we will all fly to someone, we will all return to that piece of shining matter from which our souls were torn with another, two halves of the same.

Frances tänkte inte be om ursäkt. Bättre att vara som jag, tänkte hon, än att vara gift. Hellre ungmö än trångsynt tjänstemannafru!

We were thinking of secrets. Real secrets, and snide. Too many to count. When I try now to sort out who knew what and who knew nothing, who knew everything and who was a fraud, I have to stop and give it up, it makes my head spin.

For all this time I had had as it were a sort of dam about my heart, keeping out my love: now the walls had burst, my heart was flooded, I thought I should drown...

They had no idea how decency, loyalty, courage, how it all shrivelled away when one was frightened.

There'll be tricks, tonight. I can sense it. I've a feeling for it now. I'm like a weather-vane, I start twitching when the wind's on the turn.

I'm not so sure about him.

his hand was warm, the fingers plump and bunchy and tight in their skin, like half-cooked sausages.

The rareness of the article is relative to the desire of the heart which seeks it.

You have been too long among your uncle's books. Girls love easily, there. That is the point of them. If they loved so in life, the books would not have to be written.

There seemed no motion, no rhythm, in all the world, but that which I had set up, between her legs, with one wet fingertip.

never occurred to her. She desperately tried to think through the implications of it.