“The monster—if there was one—never revealed itself to me again. But what I had learned over the past year was that monsters abound, usually in plain sight.”
― Sara Gruen, quote from At the Water's Edge
“It seems there’s nothing so good or pure it can’t be taken without a moment’s notice. And then in the end, it all gets taken anyway.”
― Sara Gruen, quote from At the Water's Edge
“I paused beneath the arched entrance, where the drawbridge had once been, imagining all the people who had passed in and out over the centuries, every one of them carrying a combination of desire, hope, jealousy, despair, grief, love, and every other human emotion; a combination that made each one as unique as a snowflake, yet linked all of them inextricably to every other human being from the dawn of time to the end of it.”
― Sara Gruen, quote from At the Water's Edge
“Life. There it was. In all its beautiful, tragic fragility, there was still life, and those of us who’d been lucky enough to survive opened our arms wide and embraced it.”
― Sara Gruen, quote from At the Water's Edge
“Always carry a large flagon of whiskey in case of snakebite, and further, always carry a small snake.”
― Sara Gruen, quote from At the Water's Edge
“I stared at him for a long time. If he wanted to end his search for the beast, he need look no further than a mirror.”
― Sara Gruen, quote from At the Water's Edge
“I want to knit socks for the soldiers."
"It's not as easy as that," she said, looking at me strangely. "It's difficult to turn a good heel. There are competitions over it.”
― Sara Gruen, quote from At the Water's Edge
“She blamed the lack of real flowers on both weather and the war, and instead put four or five pieces of coal in glass bowls, added water, salt, and ammonia, before finally pouring a mixture of violet and blue ink over them. It was a complete mystery to me how this alchemy would result in anything resembling flowers, but they were “blooming” within the hour.”
― Sara Gruen, quote from At the Water's Edge
“And you know what they say. Always carry a large flagon of whiskey in case of snakebite, and further, always carry a small snake.”
― Sara Gruen, quote from At the Water's Edge
“Violet was nothing if not sensible. She didn’t even approve when we pulled entirely harmless pranks, like hiding someone’s yacht in the wrong slip, or turning the racquet club’s pool water purple.”
― Sara Gruen, quote from At the Water's Edge
“For the rest of the night, all I could think about was how many heads had lain on those pillows before my own.”
― Sara Gruen, quote from At the Water's Edge
“Beneath it was a photograph of Hank alone, standing shirtless on the deck of a sailboat with his hands on his hips.”
― Sara Gruen, quote from At the Water's Edge
“game?—but I wasn’t shocked, as I once might”
― Sara Gruen, quote from At the Water's Edge
“comparison. His eyes were hazel, and his arms ended in white bandages just below the elbows.”
― Sara Gruen, quote from At the Water's Edge
“I sat in silence, absorbing this. They’d wagered that Mr. Ross wouldn’t throw me out if I was on my own, and no thanks to them, they were right. I wasn’t just their plaything, their pretty, fake wife. I was their unwitting pawn, theirs to strategically play.”
― Sara Gruen, quote from At the Water's Edge
“One Crow for sorrow, Two Crows for mirth, Three Crows for a wedding, Four Crows for a birth, Five Crows for silver, Six Crows for gold, Seven for a secret, never to be told.”
― Sara Gruen, quote from At the Water's Edge
“It was full of luxurious trappings and shiny baubles, and that had blinded me to the fact that nothing about it was real.”
― Sara Gruen, quote from At the Water's Edge
“She had been warned away from it her entire life, for its depth came quickly, its coldness was fierce, and the Kelpie lay in wait.”
― Sara Gruen, quote from At the Water's Edge
“Anna’s parents were staunch Wee Frees, and she wasn’t even allowed to wear face powder, never mind attend a dance. Music itself was not allowed, except on Sundays, and then it had to be for the sake of worship only, and sung unadorned. The senior McKenzies were so strict they confined their cockerel under a bushel basket on the Sabbath so he wouldn’t get up to anything untoward with the hens.”
― Sara Gruen, quote from At the Water's Edge
“I stepped forward, as Màiri once had, until my feet were at the water’s edge. I took another step, just a little one, so that the soles of my shoes were submerged. I watched the water swirl around them, then looked up at the loch itself, black and rolling, endlessly deep.”
― Sara Gruen, quote from At the Water's Edge
“exactly what she was really doing. It took but”
― Sara Gruen, quote from At the Water's Edge
“and Flying Changes. Her works have been translated into forty-three languages and have”
― Sara Gruen, quote from At the Water's Edge
“laughter, I noticed a footman in old-fashioned knee breeches perched near the top of a”
― Sara Gruen, quote from At the Water's Edge
“It seems there's nothing so good or pure it cant be taken without a moment's notice. And then in the end, it all gets taken anyway.”
― Sara Gruen, quote from At the Water's Edge
“His mother was exacting revenge because he’d dared to marry me, and his father—well, we weren’t exactly sure. Either”
― Sara Gruen, quote from At the Water's Edge
“She’s not your friend. She’s a barmaid.”
― Sara Gruen, quote from At the Water's Edge
“At home, she sulked with extravagance, and I learned early that silence was anything but peaceful. She was always upset about some slight, real or imagined, and more than capable of creating a full-blown crisis out of thin air.”
― Sara Gruen, quote from At the Water's Edge
“Ellis had slept through the entire thing. That, or he was dead, but I saw no reason to check. If he was dead, he’d still be dead in the morning.”
― Sara Gruen, quote from At the Water's Edge
“stared at him for a long time. If he wanted to end his search for the beast, he need look no further than a mirror.”
― Sara Gruen, quote from At the Water's Edge
Sara Gruen
Born place: Vancouver, Canada
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“Strangers complained about the stench, but the locals liked to brag that it was the sweet smell of money.”
― Donald Ray Pollock, quote from The Devil All the Time
“People are afraid of what they do not understand.”
― Michael J. Sullivan, quote from The Crown Conspiracy
“Only the deeper parts of the mind have so little sense of time.”
― Iris Murdoch, quote from The Sea, the Sea
“There is a deeper reason why the café was so precious to this town. And this deeper reason has to do with a certain pride that had not hitherto been known in these parts. To understand this new pride the cheapness of human life must be kept in mind. There were always plenty of people clustered around a mill – but it was seldom that every family had enough meal, garments, and fat back to go the rounds. Life could become one long dim scramble just to get the things needed to keep alive. And the confusing point is this: All useful things have a price, and are bought only with money, as that is the way the world is run. You know without having to reason about it the price of a bale of cotton, or a quart of molasses. But no value has been put on human life; it is given to us free and taken without being paid for. What is it worth? If you look around, at times the value may seem to be little or nothing at all. Often after you have sweated and tried and things are not better for you, there comes a feeling deep down in the soul that you are not worth much.”
― Carson McCullers, quote from The Ballad of the Sad Café and Other Stories
“It's like when you take a trip with someone you don't know very well. Sometimes, you can get very close very quickly, but then after the trip is over, you realize all that was a false sort of closeness. An intimacy based on the trip more than the travelers.”
― Gabrielle Zevin, quote from Memoirs of a Teenage Amnesiac
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Feral SinsBookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.
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