Quotes from Sea Glass

Anita Shreve ·  374 pages

Rating: (22.2K votes)


“Her pace is furious as she walks along the beach, the surf competing with the noise in her head.”
― Anita Shreve, quote from Sea Glass


“One day a man has a job, and life is full of possibilities. The next day the job and the car are gone, and the man cannot look his wife in the eye.”
― Anita Shreve, quote from Sea Glass


“But before that, before the farm went bad, Alphonse remembers being happy. He didn't know it was happiness and couldn't have put a name to it then - in fact he's pretty sure he never even thought about it - but now he knows that it was happiness.”
― Anita Shreve, quote from Sea Glass


“And though her husband will appear to come alive, she knows that it is lust - too quickly ignited and too quickly extinguished - that animates him.”
― Anita Shreve, quote from Sea Glass


“Poverty, her mother has written, makes you clever, and Honora knows that this is true.”
― Anita Shreve, quote from Sea Glass



“And yet. And yet. If asked - if pressed - Honora would have to say she is strangely content. It's an odd feeling that she cannot describe to anyone - not to her mother and certainly not to Sexton, whose unhappiness seems to have no bounds, whose unhappiness is defined now by what he does not have, which is almost everything. He will always, in his mind, be the salesman who no longer has anything to sell. A man who longs for the open road but who cannot ever take it. Whereas Honora, oddly, now has more purpose than she ever did before. She is a dutiful wife who tends to her husband in spite of his weaknesses. She is a woman with ingenuity. She is a woman without illusions. She is a woman who, above all, is too busy trying to make a go of it to fret about her marriage.”
― Anita Shreve, quote from Sea Glass


“All the picketers look bored and hot and like they”
― Anita Shreve, quote from Sea Glass


“You have to do what your heart dictates," Vivian says.
"Do you believe that?"
"Not sure, actually. It's always annoyingly inconvenient, isn't it, the thing about the heart?”
― Anita Shreve, quote from Sea Glass


About the author

Anita Shreve
Born place: in Dedham, Massachusetts
Born date October 7, 1946
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Popular quotes

“There is something profoundly cynical, my friends, in the notion of paradise after death. The lure is evasion. The promise is excusative. One need not accept responsibility for the world as it is, and by extension, one need do nothing about it. To strive for change, for true goodness in this mortal world, one must acknowledge and accept, within one's own soul, that this mortal reality has purpose in itself, that its greatest value is not for us, but for our children and their children. To view life as but a quick passage alone a foul, tortured path – made foul and tortured by our own indifference – is to excuse all manner of misery and depravity, and to exact cruel punishment upon the innocent lives to come.

I defy this notion of paradise beyond the gates of bone. If the soul truly survives the passage, then it behooves us – each of us, my friends – to nurture a faith in similitude: what awaits us is a reflection of what we leave behind, and in the squandering of our mortal existence, we surrender the opportunity to learn the ways of goodness, the practice of sympathy, empathy, compassion and healing – all passed by in our rush to arrive at a place of glory and beauty, a place we did not earn, and most certainly do not deserve.”
― Steven Erikson, quote from The Bonehunters


“You in the back," said the principal. "Don't think you can hide. Tell me. What would you like to be?"

"Dangerous," said the hidden girl, without a second's hesitation.”
― Kirsten Miller, quote from Inside the Shadow City


“The past shouldn't be forgotten. It should be used as a guide for future situations and not used as a reason to avoid making difficult decisions. There was always a choice.”
― Maria V. Snyder, quote from Storm Glass


“Some people were born just so they could be buried.”
― Donald Ray Pollock, quote from The Devil All the Time


“Alric! Stop it!" Pickering snapped at him. "You mustn't let the men see you crying!"

Fury flared in Alric, and he spun on the count. "No? No? Look at them! They are dying for me. They are dying on my order! I say they do have a right to see their king! They all have a right to see their king!"

Alric wiped the tears from his cheeks and gathered his reins. "I'm tired of this. I'm tired of having my face put in the dirt! I won't stand it. I'm tired of being helpless. That's my city, built by my ancestors! If my people chose to fight, then, by Maribor, I want them to know it's me they fight!"

The prince put on his helm, drew his father's large sword and spurred his horse forward, not at the trench but at the castle gate itself.”
― Michael J. Sullivan, quote from The Crown Conspiracy


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