Home > Work > The Gilded Hour (The Waverly Place #1)
1 " No one ever does anything our of charity," Anna went on. "Every choice we make benefits ourselves directly or indirectly. Even if it looks like a sacrifice, the alternative would be unbearable in some way. If I hadn't helped I wouldn't sleep well , and I need my sleep. "
― Sara Donati , The Gilded Hour (The Waverly Place #1)
2 " There was nothing predictable in this life, and very little that was fair. "
3 " If this went on much longer, Mary Augustin told herself, her brain would be riddled with question marks, hundreds of little hooks set so deep they’d never let go. "
4 " But what she wanted to do was slip between cool sheets and fall asleep in a breeze from an open window. She wanted to sleep for days on end, and to wake up when the whole sorry business of the inquest and the missing boys had been resolved. She wanted sleep in order to put Mrs. Stone’s testimony out of her head, and at the same time she wanted to bind all those words together into a club and hit every man in the room over the head with it. Because they hadn’t really understood the story behind the story, and what Mrs. Stone was trying to tell them about Janine Campbell’s life. Mrs. Stone had called herself plain-speaking and blunt, but she had wrapped every observation in the language of well-brought-up women, with the result that none of the men had any real sense of the anger and frustration that drove Janine Campbell. "
5 " No, I’m saying that you have got to look and think symptom, not disease. If she’s a symptom, then ask, where is the disease? "
6 " Give children a clock to live by,” Mrs. Lee said. “So they know what’s coming, when it’s coming, how long it will last. They’ll take comfort in that knowing. "
7 " And I knew it was her, the one I thought I’d never find. A strong woman, a smart, beautiful, uncompromising woman, and sure of her place in the world. "
8 " Caught in the gloaming, suspended in the gilded hour, she saw herself in a landscape of years stretching into a horizon she had never dared imagine for herself. "
9 " When will you stop thinking of yourself as a burden? "
10 " Young people today (finally, I’m old enough to use that cliché) seem to have no real conception of how bad things were for women and, more important, could be again. "
11 " There was nothing predictable in this life, and very little that was fair. • "
12 " Casual cruelty and callous indifference could destroy a woman as effectively as fists. "
13 " Jack said, “I walked into the church basement and there she "
14 " Children survived, if they had half a chance. Children who could form attachments survived best. "
15 " Things never quite turn out the way you imagine, do they,” Miss Branson said, her voice low and almost amused in tone. “You have to pay attention to the moment in your hands, before it’s gone. "
16 " In the quiet Rosa came forward and put an arm around her sister. They looked so much alike, and were so different in the way they saw the world. She wondered if Rosa might have been a child more like her sister if circumstance hadn’t demanded the impossible of her. "
17 " She wasn’t healing, that was the wrong word. She was coming to terms with loss. "
18 " Queens and goddesses forget nothing, except when it suits them. "
19 " All I want is a household of my own,” Margaret said. “With my own people, who look to me first instead of last. "
20 " Endeavor to deserve her, "