Fingersmith

We have a name for your disease. We call it a hyper-aesthetic one. You have been encouraged to over-indulge yourself in literature; and have inflamed your organs of fancy.

I felt that thread that had come between us, tugging, tugging at my heart - so hard, it hurt me. A hundred times I almost rose, almost went in to her; a hundred times I thought, Go to her! Why are you waiting? Go back to her side! But every time, I thought of what would happen if I did. I knew that I couldn't lie beside her, without wanting to touch her. I couldn't have felt her breath upon my mouth, without wanting to kiss her. And I couldn't have kissed her, without wanting to save her.

It's a curious, wanting thing.

But, here was a curious thing. The more I tried to give up thinking of her, the more I said to myself, 'She's nothing to you', the harder I tried to pluck the idea of her out of my heart, the more she stayed there.

What does it say?" I said, when I had. She said, "It is filled with all the words for how I want you...Look.

...but when she saw me turn to her she reached and took my hand. She took it, not to be led by me, not to be comforted; only to hold it, because it was mine.

..this feeling haunts and inhabits me, like a sickness. it covers me, like skin.

She was like milk - too pale, too pure, too simple. She was made to be spoiled.

Even ashes are a part of your freedom.

Words, hmm? They seduce us in darkness, and the mind clothes and fashions them to fashions of its own.

I suppose I really seemed mad, then; but it was only through the awfulness of having said nothing but the truth, and being thought to be deluded.

Weep all the artful tears you like. You shall never make my hard heart the softer.

It was only later that I wondered about it and tried to look back. But by then I could only see that there was once a time when we had walked apart; and then a time when we walked together.

Is this desire? How queer that I, of all people, should not know! But I thought desire smaller, neater; I supposed it bound to its own organs as taste is bound to the mouth, vision to the eye. This feeling haunts and inhabits me, like a sickness. It covers me, like skin.

The bad blood rose in me, just like wine.

There is no patience so terrible as that of the deranged.

It was like kissing the darkness. As if the darkness had life, had a shape, had taste, was warm and glib.

But the more I think it, the more I want her, the more my desire rises and swells.

I give myself up to darkness; and wish I may never again be required to lift my head to the light.

.. now i begin to feel a longing so great, so sharp, i fear it will never be assuaged. i think it will mount, and mount, and make me mad, or kill me.

Everybody in my world knew that regular work was only another name for being robbed and dying of boredom.

...For I could not want her now, more than I could a lover. But I could not want a lover, more than I want freedom.

Oh, but this,' I think I say, 'is perfect! This is all I have longed for! What are you gazing at? Do you suppose a girl is sitting here? That girl is lost! She has been drowned! She is lying, fathoms deep. Do you think she has arms and legs, with flesh and cloth upon them? Do you think she has hair? She has only bones, stripped white! She is as white as a page of paper! She is a book, from which the words have peeled and drifted--

My happiness is nothing to him,” she said. “Only his books! He has made me like a book. I am not meant to be taken, and touched, and liked. I am meant to keep here, in dim light, forever!

It was odd to see her stepping out of that gloomy place, like a pearl coming out of an oyster.

I have some knowledge of the time that may be misspent, clinging to fictions and supposing them truths.

But it's the simple and the good that are meant to suffer in this world—ain't it, though!