Quotessence
Home / Authors / Sarah Waters Books
Sarah Waters

Sarah Waters Books

Novelist

Fingersmith

A source page for quotes linked to Sarah Waters.

0 quotes

Affinity

A source page for quotes linked to Sarah Waters.

0 quotes

The Night Watch

A source page for quotes linked to Sarah Waters.

0 quotes

Related Quotes

“As she mader the long journey home to Champion Hill she felt what she had tried and failed to feel the day before: she looked at the city and was sick with love for it, sick with yearning to remain a part of it, to remain alive and young and unconfined and bursting with sensation. Her tired muscles began to ache, but even the ache was dear to her, even the blisters on her heels. She'd be a thing of aches and blisters for the rest of her days, she thought; she'd ask for nothing, trouble no one; if only they'd let her keep her freedom, if only they'd let her keep her life.”

FreedomBlistersFrancesPaying GuestsChampion Hill
Book:The Paying Guests
Create image

“There was a little padded seat beside the rattling panes and mouldy sand-bags, it was the coldest place in the room; but she kept there for an hour and a half, with a shawl about her, shivering, squinting at her stitches, and sneaking sly little glances at the road to the house. I thought, if that wasn’t love, then I was a Dutchman; and if it was love, then lovers were pigeons and geese, and I was glad I was not one of them.”

InfatuationLove Sickness
Book:Fingersmith
Create image

“She ran, and leaned to the wall, until her face was close to mine and her breath came on me. I said, 'I'll do it. I'll go with you. I love you, and I cannot give you up. Only tell me what I must do and I will do it!' Then I saw her eye, and it was black, and my own face swam in it, pale as a pearl. And then, it was like Pa and the looking-glass. My soul left me - I felt it fly from me and lodge in her.”

LoveLifeSoulAdorationPearlLooking Glass
Book:Affinity
Create image

“She shook her head, and closed her eyes. I felt her weariness then, and with it, my own. I felt it dark and heavy upon me, darker and heavier than any drug they ever gave me - it seemed heavy as death. I looked at the bed. I have seemed to see our kisses there sometimes, I've seen them hanging in the curtains, like bats, ready to swoop. Now, I thought, I might jolt the post and they would only fall, and shatter, and turn to powder.”

DarkDrugHeavyEyesWearyBatsWearinessPowderKissesShatter
Book:Affinity
Create image

“I had a very clear vision, of Selina with her hair about her shoulders, a crimson hat upon her head, a velvet coat, ice-skates - I must have been remembering some picture. I imagined myself beside her, the air coming sharply into our mouths. I imagined how it would be if I took her, not to Italy, but only to Marishes, to my sister's house; if I sat with her at supper, and shared her room, and kissed her - I cannot say what would frighten them most - her being a spirit-medium, or a convict, or a girl.”

LoveGayEqualityLesbianConvictSpirit Medium
Book:Affinity
Create image

“But you cannot know the glimpses I have had, you cannot know there is another, dazzling place, that seems to welcome me! I have been led to it, Helen, by someone marvellous and strange. You won't know this. They will tell you of her, and they will make her seem squalid and ordinary, they will turn my passion into something gross and wrong. You will know, that it is neither of those things. It is only love, Helen - only that. I cannot live, and not be at her side!”

LoveStrangeMarvellousSide By Side
Book:Affinity
Create image

“There were about thirty of them, I think - all women; all seated at tables, bearing drinks and books and papers. You might have passed any one of them upon the street, and thought nothing; but the effect of their appearance all combined was rather queer. They were dressed, not strangely, but somehow distinctly. They wore skirts - but the kind of skirts a tailor might design if he were set, for a dare, to sew a bustle for a gent. Many seemed clad in walking-suits or riding-habits. Many wore pince-nez, or carried monocles on ribbons. There were one or two rather startling coiffures; and there were more neckties than I had ever seen brought together at any exclusively female ensemble.”

LesbianLesbiansLesbian FictionSarah WatersTipping The VelvetNan Astley
Book:Tipping The Velvet
Create image

“Girls love easily, there. That is their point. Hip, lip and tongue― ‘Do you think me good?’ I say. ‘Good, miss?’ She does. It felt like safety, once. Now it feels like a trap. I say, ‘I wish― I wish you would tell me―’ ‘Tell you what, miss?’ Tell me. Tell me a way to save you. A way to save myself. The room is perfectly black. Hip, lip― Girls love easily, there. ‘I wish,’ I say, ‘I wish you would tell me what it is a wife must do, on her wedding-night...’ And at first, it is easy. After all, this is how it is done, in my uncle's books: two girls, one wise and one unknowing... ‘He will want,’ she says, ‘to kiss you. He will want to embrace you.’ It is easy. I say my part, and she ―with a little prompting ― says hers. The words sink back upon their pages. It is easy, it is easy... Then she rises above me and puts her mouth to mine.”

Maud
Book:Fingersmith
Create image

“Now I have more freedom than I have ever had at any time in my life, and I do only the things I always have. They were empty before, but Selina has given a meaning to them, I do them for her. I am waiting, for her - but, waiting, I think, is too poor a word for it. I am engaged with the substance of the minutes as they pass. I feel the surface of my flesh stir - it is like the surface of the sea that knows the moon is drawing near it. If I take up a book, I might as well never have seen a line of print before - books are filled, now, with messages aimed only at me. An hour ago, I found this: The blood is listening in my frame, And thronging shadows, fast and thick, Fall on my overflowing eyes... It is as if every poet who ever wrote a line to his own love wrote secretly for me, and for Selina. My blood - even as I write this - my blood, my muscle and every fibre of me, is listening, for her. When I sleep, it is to dream of her. When shadows move across my eye, I know them now for shadows of her. My room is still, but never silent - I hear her heart, beating across the night in time to my own. My room is dark, but darkness is different for me now. I know all its depths and textures - darkness like velvet, darkness like felt, darkness bristling as coir or prison wool.”

LoveDifferentLightPoetryChangeDarkDarknessWordsSecrecyAdorationTextures
Book:Affinity
Create image

“Cut like crazy. Less is more. I've often read manuscripts - including my own - where I've got to the beginning of, say, chapter two and have thought: “This is where the novel should actually start.” A huge amount of information about character and backstory can be conveyed through small detail. The emotional attachment you feel to a scene or a chapter will fade as you move on to other stories. Be business-like about it.”

FeelsShouldTwoCharacterStoriesMovingMy OwnNovelCuttingCrazyInformationEmotionalHugeAmountSceneIncludingDetailsAttachmentFadesChaptersManuscriptsLess Is MoreSmall Details
Author:Sarah Waters
Create image