Sarah Waters

“It made me giddy. It made me blush, worse than before. It was like liquor. It made me drunk. I drew away. When her breath came now upon my mouth, it came very cold. My mouth was wet, from hers. I said, in a whisper,'Do you feel it?”

“She said that that was the disadvantage of bringing creatures into the house: one grew used to them, and then, one had the upset of their loss.”

“And perhaps there is a limit to the grieving that the human heart can do. As when one adds salt to a tumbler of water, there comes a point where simply no more will be absorbed.”

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

“I never expected my books to do even as well as they have. I still feel grateful for it, every single day.”

“But it's the simple and the good that are meant to suffer in this world—ain't it, though!”

“She closed her eyes and let the rain fall on her face, and after another second, I could not have said what were raindrops, and what tears.”

“With every step I took away from her, the movement at my heart and between my legs grew more defined: I felt like a ventriloquist, locking his protesting dolls in to a trunk.”

“Ours is a world which feels so unsettled and dangerous in large ways, whether it's terrorism or global financial meltdown or climate change - huge things that affect us deeply, and yet things about which we can do, individually, very little.”

“I've never managed to get very far with Henry James.”

“I wouldn't mind being a fly on the wall in a few Victorian parlours.”

“I used to hate flying. I would sit there, rigid, convinced that if I relaxed, the plane would drop out of the sky.”

“The early '20s were like the waist of an hourglass. Lots of things were hurtling toward it and squeezing through it and then hurtling out the other side.”

“She raised her head when she heard my step, and her gaze met my own, over the matron's dipping shoulder, and her eyes grew bright. I knew then how hard it had been to keep, not just from Millbank but from her. I 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?”

“I knew I'd always be a second-rate academic, and I thought, 'Well, I'd rather be a second-rate novelist or even a third-rate one'.”

“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.”

“I've ended up feeling fonder of 'The Paying Guests' than of any of my other novels.”

“Marriages are like pianos. They go in and out of tune.”

“It was a great childhood. We weren't especially wealthy or anything, but I felt I had a kind of safety and freedom.”

“My story is the story of many postwar British families. Upward mobility. A council house and then new affluence.”