Tipping the Velvet QUOTES

1 " 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... "

― Sarah Waters , Tipping the Velvet

2 " 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. "

― Sarah Waters , Tipping the Velvet

3 " It was heavy, and I staggered when I lifted it; but it was strangely satifying to have a real burden upon my shoulders – a kind of counterweight to my terrible heaviness of heart. "

― Sarah Waters , Tipping the Velvet

4 " We fitted together like the two halves of an oyster-shell. I was Narcissus, embracing the pond in which I was about to drown. However much we had to hide our love, however guarded we had to be about our pleasure, I could not long be miserable about a thing so very sweet. Nor, in my gladness, could I quite believe that anybody would be anything but happy for me if only they knew. "

― Sarah Waters , Tipping the Velvet

5 " Her friend - and her partner on the stage. You will not believe me, but making love to Kitty - a thing done in passion, but always, too, in shadow and silence, and with an ear half-cocked for the sound of footsteps on the stairs - making love to Kitty and posing at her side in a shaft of limelight, before a thousand pairs of eyes, to a script I knew by heart, in an attitude I had laboured for hours to perfect - these things were not so very different. A double act is always twice the act that the audience thinks it; beyond our songs, our steps, our bits of business with coins and canes and flowers, there was a private language, in which we held an endless, delicate exchange of which the crowd knew nothing. This was a language not of the tongue but of the body, its vocabulary the pressure of a finger or a palm, the nudging of a hip, the holding or breaking of a gaze, that said, You are too slow - you got too fast - not there but here - that's good - that's better! It was as if we walked before the crimson curtain, lay down upon the boards and kissed and fondled - and were clapped, and cheered, and paid for it! "

― Sarah Waters , Tipping the Velvet

6 " Tricky was a plain-faced man with a very handsome voice - a voice like the sound of a clarinet, at once liquid and penetrating, and lovely to listen to. "

― Sarah Waters , Tipping the Velvet

7 " clad not exactly as a boy but, rather confusingly, as the boy I would have been, had I been more of a girl "

― Sarah Waters , Tipping the Velvet

8 " I knew that Kitty and I felt just the same- only, of course, about different things. I should have remembered this, later. "

― Sarah Waters , Tipping the Velvet

9 " 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. "

― Sarah Waters , Tipping the Velvet

10 " Being in love, you know... it's not like having a canary, in a cage. When you lose one sweetheart, you can't just go out and get another to replace her. "

― Sarah Waters , Tipping the Velvet

11 " When I see her,” I said, “it’s like - I don’t know what it’s like. It’s like I never saw anything at all before. It’s like I am filling up, like a wine-glass when it’s filled with wine. I watch the acts before her and they are like nothing - they’re like dust. Then she walks on the stage and - she is so pretty; and her suit is so nice; and her voice is so sweet… She makes me want to smile and weep, at once. She makes me sore, here.” I placed a hand upon my chest, upon the breast-bone. “I never saw a girl like her before. I never knew that there were girls like her…” My voice became a trembling whisper then, and I found that I could say no more. There was another silence. I opened my eyes and looked at Alice - and knew at once that I shouldn’t have spoken; that I should have been as dumb and as cunning with her as with the rest of them. There was a look on her face - it was not ambiguous at all now - a look of mingled shock, and nervousness, and embarrassment or shame. I had said too much. I felt as if my admiration for Kitty Butler had lit a beacon inside me, and opening my unguarded mouth had sent a shaft of light into the darkened room, illuminating all. I had said too much - but it was that, or say nothing. "

― Sarah Waters , Tipping the Velvet

12 " You smell,' she began, slowly and wonderingly, 'like -'
'Like a herring!'I said bitterly. My cheeks were hot now and very red; there were tears, almost, in my eyes. I think she saw my confusion and was sorry for it.
'Not at all like a herring,' she said gently.'But perhaps, maybe, like a mermaid... "

― Sarah Waters , Tipping the Velvet

13 " Oh, for shame! Nancy, have you never seen Florrie's face in a chrysanthemum, or a rose?'

'Never.' I said. 'Though there was a flounder for sale on a fishmonger's barrow, in Whitechapel yesterday, and the likeness was quite uncanny. I very nearly brought it home... "

― Sarah Waters , Tipping the Velvet

14 " She sang that night like - I cannot say like an angel, for her songs were all of champagne suppers and strolling in the Burlington Arcade; perhaps, then, like a fallen angel - or yet again like a falling one: she sang like a falling angel might sing with the bounds of heaven fresh burst behind him, and hell still distant and unguessed. And as she did so, I sang with her - not loudly and carelessly like the rest of the crowd, but softly, almost secretly, as if she might hear me the better if I whispered rather than bawled. "

― Sarah Waters , Tipping the Velvet

15 " But he was not like Walter, who might take his pleasure where he chose it. His pleasure had turned, at the last, to a kind of grief; and his love was a love so fierce and so secret it must be satisfied, with a stranger, in a reeking court like this. I knew about that kind of love. I knew how it was to bare your palpitating heart, and be fearful as you did so that the beats should come too loudly, and betray you. "

― Sarah Waters , Tipping the Velvet

16 " Now she has turned up, saying all the things I dreamed she'd say. "

― Sarah Waters , Tipping the Velvet

17 " I have been being careful since the first minute I saw you. I am the Queen of Carefulness. I shall go on being careful for ever, if you like - so long as I might be a bit reckless, sometimes, when we are quite alone "

― Sarah Waters , Tipping the Velvet

18 " Kitty’s gone, Flo. Like Lilian. Believe me, there’s more chance of her coming back!’ I began to smile. ‘And if she does, you can go to her, and I won’t say a word. And if Kitty comes for me, you can do similar. And then, I suppose, we shall have our paradises - and will be able to wave to one another from our separate clouds. But till then - till then, Flo, can’t we go on kissing, and just be glad? "

― Sarah Waters , Tipping the Velvet

19 " When I see her,’ I said, ‘it’s like - I don’t know what it’s like. It’s like I never saw anything at all before. "

― Sarah Waters , Tipping the Velvet

20 " I might be weary or stupid; I might be nauseous with drink; I might be sore, at the hips, with the ache of my monthlies, but the opening of this box, as I have said, never ceased to stir me - I was like a dog twitching and slavering to hear his mistress call out Bone! "

― Sarah Waters , Tipping the Velvet