180 Quotes by Sarah Waters

But the more I think it, the more I want her, the more my desire rises and swells.

I felt that thread that had come between us, tugging, tugging at my heart—so hard, it hurt me.

She said, 'It is filled with all the words for how I want you.

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...

Don't you be thinking,' she says, 'on things that are done and can't be changed. All right, dear girl? You think of the time to come.

They might be kind, I thought. They might be sensible and good. They will not be like you. But I did not say it. I knew it would mean nothing to her. I said something - something ordinary and mild, I cannot think what. And after a time she came and kissed my cheek, and then she left me.

A man ought to be a source of shame to his father, don’t you think? If I ever have a son, I hope he makes my life hell. How, otherwise, will there ever be any progress?

We fitted together like the two halves of an oyster-shell. I was Narcissus, embracing the pond in which I was about to drown. However much we had to hide our love, however guarded we had to be about our pleasure, I could not long be miserable about a thing so very sweet. Nor, in my gladness, could I quite believe that anybody would be anything but happy for me if only they knew.

One time, two years ago, I took a draught of morphia, meaning to end my life. My mother found me before the life was ended, the doctor drew the poison from my stomach with a syringe, and when I woke, it was to the sound of my own weeping. For I had hoped to open my eyes on Heaven, where my father was; and they had only pulled me back to Hell.