180 Quotes by Sarah Waters

The words used to drive me into secret rages, because on the one hand I wanted desperately to live up to my own reputation for cleverness, and on the other it seemed very unfair, that that cleverness, which I had never asked for, could be turned into something with which to cut me down.

The fitful sleeping makes the hours pass slowly; it seems to me the night has many nights in it – has years of nights! – through which, as if through drifts of smoke, I am compelled to stumble.

Read like mad. But try to do it analytically – which can be hard, because the better and more compelling a novel is, the less conscious you will be of its devices. It’s worth trying to figure those devices out, however: they might come in useful in your own work.

Now the world seemed to her to have become so complex that its problems defied solution. There was only a chaos of conflicts of interest; the whole thing filled her with a sense of futility.

It was like a cure, being with Lilian. It made one feel like a piece of wax being cradled in a soft, warm palm.

She will be like everyone, putting on the things she sees the constructions she expects to find there.

You don’t think about all these colours when everything’s going all right; you’d go mad if you did. You just think about the colour on the top. But those colours are there, all the same. All the quarrels, and the bits of unkindness. And every so often something happens to put a chip right through; and then you can’t not think of them.’ She looked up, and grew self-conscious;.

Yes, Emily Dickenson – a rather exhausting poet, now I come to think of it. All that breathlessness and skipping about. What’s wrong with nice, long lines and a jaunty rhythm?

Was this, she thought, what happened when one made friends with a married woman? One automatically got the husband too? – like a crochet pattern, coming free with a magazine?