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

“Coddly slammed a fist on the table. “No one will take you seriously if you do not act decisively.”

There was a beat of silence after his voice stopped echoing around the room, and the entire table sat motionless.

“Fine,” I responded calmly. “You’re fired.”

Coddly laughed, looking at the other gentlemen at the table. “You can’t fire me, Your Highness.”

I tilted my head, staring at him. “I assure you, I can. There’s no one here who outranks me at the moment, and you are easily replaceable.”

Though she tried to be discreet, I saw Lady Brice purse her lips together, clearly determined not to laugh. Yes, I definitely had an ally in her.

“You need to fight!” he insisted.

“No,” I answered firmly. “A war would add unnecessary strain to an already stressful moment and would cause an upheaval between us and the country we are now bound to by marriage. We will not fight.”

Coddly lowered his chin and squinted. “Don’t you think you’re being too emotional about this?”

I stood, my chair screeching behind me as I moved. “I’m going to assume that you aren’t implying by that statement that I’m actually being too female about this. Because, yes, I am emotional.”

I strode around the opposite side of the table, my eyes trained on Coddly. “My mother is in a bed with tubes down her throat, my twin is now on a different continent, and my father is holding himself together by a thread.”

Stopping across from him, I continued. “I have two younger brothers to keep calm in the wake of all this, a country to run, and six boys downstairs waiting for me to offer one of them my hand.” Coddly swallowed, and I felt only the tiniest bit of guilt for the satisfaction it brought me. “So, yes, I am emotional right now. Anyone in my position with a soul would be. And you, sir, are an idiot. How dare you try to force my hand on something so monumental on the grounds of something so small? For all intents and purposes, I am queen, and you will not coerce me into anything.”

I walked back to the head of the table. “Officer Leger?”

“Yes, Your Highness?”

“Is there anything on this agenda that can’t wait until tomorrow?”

“No, Your Highness.”

“Good. You’re all dismissed. And I suggest you all remember who’s in charge here before we meet again.”
― Kiera Cass, quote from The Crown


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― Cara Lynn Shultz, quote from Spellbound


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― Jim Butcher, quote from Blood Rites


“Look at me, I believe in the craziest stuff and I have a really fun time.”
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“It always shocked me how you could understand so many things and be such a complete idiot about so many others.”
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