“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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“So. Yes. We're all dying. We're all crumbling into the void, one cell at a time. We are disintegrating like sugar cubes in champagne. But only women have to pretend it isn't happening. Fifty-something men wander around with their guts flopped over their waistbands and their faces looking like a busted tramp's mattress in an underpass. They sprout nasal hair and chasm-like wrinkles, and go 'Ooof!' whenever they stand up or sit down. men visibly age, every day -- but women are supposed to stop the decline at around 37, 38, and live out the next 30 or 40 years in some magical bubble where their hair is still shiny and chestnut, their face unlined, their lips puffy, and their tits up on the top third of the ribcage.”
― Caitlin Moran, quote from How to Be a Woman
“And no matter how much the gray people in power despise knowledge, they can’t do anything about historical objectivity; they can slow it down, but they can’t stop it. Despising and fearing knowledge, they will nonetheless inevitably decide to promote it in order to survive. Sooner or later they will be forced to allow universities and scientific societies, to create research centers, observatories, and laboratories, and thus to create a cadre of people of thought and knowledge: people who are completely beyond their control, people with a completely different psychology and with completely different needs. And these people cannot exist and certainly cannot function in the former atmosphere of low self-interest, banal preoccupations, dull self-satisfaction, and purely carnal needs. They need a new atmosphere— an atmosphere of comprehensive and inclusive learning, permeated with creative tension; they need writers, artists, composers— and the gray people in power are forced to make this concession too. The obstinate ones will be swept aside by their more cunning opponents in the struggle for power, but those who make this concession are, inevitably and paradoxically, digging their own graves against their will. For fatal to the ignorant egoists and fanatics is the growth of a full range of culture in the people— from research in the natural sciences to the ability to marvel at great music. And then comes the associated process of the broad intellectualization of society: an era in which grayness fights its last battles with a brutality that takes humanity back to the middle ages, loses these battles, and forever disappears as an actual force.”
― Arkady Strugatsky, quote from Hard to Be a God
“Loving someone should never end in all-consuming devastation.”
― Tina Reber, quote from Love Unrehearsed
“That depends. Are you going to call me an ass again?"
"That depends. Are you going to act like one?" -Ashton and Maya”
― Kelley Armstrong, quote from The Rising
“love is an emotion that recognizes itself in others.”
― Salman Rushdie, quote from Shame
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The Yacoubian Buildi...BookQuoters 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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