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The Paying Guests QUOTES

The Paying Guests QUOTES

1 " Marriages are like pianos. They go in and out of tune. "

― Sarah Waters , The Paying Guests

2 " I'm sorry you aren't as brave as you thought you were. But don't punish me because of it. "

― Sarah Waters , The Paying Guests

3 " Their friendship sometimes struck Frances as being like a piece of soap-like a piece of ancient kitchen soap that had got worn to the shape of her hand, but which had been dropped to the floor so many times it was never quite free of its bits of cinder. "

― Sarah Waters , The Paying Guests

4 " I barely knew I had skin before I met you. "

― Sarah Waters , The Paying Guests

5 " Some things are so frightful that a bit of madness is the only sane response. You know that, don’t you? "

― Sarah Waters , The Paying Guests

6 " She loved these walks through London. She seemed, as she made them, to become porous, to soak in detail after detail; or else, like a battery to become charged. Yes, that was it, she thought, as she turned a corner: it wasn't a liquid creeping, it was a tingle, something electric, something produced as if by the friction of her shoes against the streets. She was at her truest, it seemed to her, in these tingling moments. "

― Sarah Waters , The Paying Guests

7 " The rest of us become narrow and mean when we live falsely. I'm sick to death of living falsely. I've been doing it for years. "

― Sarah Waters , The Paying Guests

8 " She was at her truest, it seemed to her, in these tingling moments—these moments when, paradoxically, she was also at her most anonymous. "

― Sarah Waters , The Paying Guests

9 " For was that all, she thought bleakly, that love ever was? Something that saved one from loneliness? A sort of insurance policy against not counting? "

― Sarah Waters , The Paying Guests

10 " The jury had persuaded themselves that he was decent, because they had wanted to think that in his shoes they would have been decent too. They had no idea how decency, loyalty, courage, how it all shrivelled away when one was frightened. "

― Sarah Waters , The Paying Guests

11 " They made her feel lonelier, suddenly, than she had ever felt before. She went creeping into her room and undressed without lighting a candle, then lay curled in bed in a ferment of misery. What was the use of her being alive? Her heart was some desiccated thing: a prune, a fossil, a piece of clinker. Her mouth might as well be filled with ashes. It was all utterly hopeless and futile . . . "

― Sarah Waters , The Paying Guests

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

― Sarah Waters , The Paying Guests

13 " Sometimes the shortest journeys take longest, don’t they? "

― Sarah Waters , The Paying Guests

14 " She said, 'It's real, isn't it?'

Lilian answered after a pause, with a bowed head, in a murmur. 'Yes, it's real. It's the only real thing. "

― Sarah Waters , The Paying Guests

15 " 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. "

― Sarah Waters , The Paying Guests

16 " ...Everyone's so narrow and mean and --'

'No. Only a few people are. But the rest of us -- don't you see? The rest of us become narrow and mean when we live falsely.... "

― Sarah Waters , The Paying Guests

17 " What did she want? Frances couldn't tell. She wasn't sure she cared any more. There had been too much dancing back and forth. The night had been over-stretched: it had lost its tension. "

― Sarah Waters , The Paying Guests

18 " As far as Frances was concerned, gardening was simply open-air housework. "

― Sarah Waters , The Paying Guests

19 " But for now there was this, and it was enough, it was more than they could have hoped for: the two of them in their stone corner, their dark clothes bleeding into the dusk, lights being kindled across the city, and a few pale stars in the sky. "

― Sarah Waters , The Paying Guests

20 " And, worst of all, she was trapped with their marriage, their mystifying union, which had evidently passed out of whatever affectionate phase it had recently enjoyed and was already mired in some new quarrel . . . She didn’t care about the details. "

― Sarah Waters , The Paying Guests