180 Quotes by Sarah Waters

But words, Hawtrey, words – hmm? They seduce us in darkness, and the mind clothes and fleshes them to fashions of its own.

Don’t you like surprises?’ No, Frances didn’t like surprises. She hated the thought of people plotting and planning on her behalf. She loathed the burden of being delighted once the surprise was disclosed.

She will laugh. The sound is as strange, at Briar, as I imagine it must be in a prison or a church. Sometimes, she will sing. Once we talk of dancing. She rises and lifts her skirt, to show me a step. Then she pulls me to my feet, and turns and turns me; and I feel, where she presses against me, the quickening beat of her heart – I feel it pass from her to me and become mine.

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...

And for a moment I though I would tell her, that it would be the easiest and the slightest thing imaginable- that after all, if anyone would understand it, she would. That I need only say, ‘I am in love, Helen! I am in love! There is a girl so rare and marvelous and strange, and- Helen, she has all my life in her!

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

I could not want a lover, more than I want freedom.

Everybody in my world knew that regular work was only another name for being robbed and dying of boredom.

A girl, like you – ’ ‘Like me? There are no girls like me.’ I.