Sarah Waters Quotes

My entire soul is a cry, and all my work is a commentary on that cry.

...and the most intense desire gave force to her passionate words as the girl glanced despairingly about the dreary room like a caged creature on the point of breaking loose.

Each day brought just another minute of the things they could not leave behind. Jane Barrington sitting on the train coming back to Leningrad from Moscow, holding on to her son, knowing she had failed him, crying for Alexander, wanting another drink, and Harold, in his prison cell, crying for Alexander, and Yuri Stepanov on his stomach in the mud in Finland, crying for Alexander, and Dasha in the truck, on the Ladoga ice, crying for Alexander, and Tatiana on her knees in the Finland marsh, screaming for Alexander, and Anthony, alone with his nightmares, crying for his father.

When he turned to face her, the drawn look on his face was one of absolute agony as if Luce had just ripped his heart out

'T is sweeter for thee despairing Than aught in the world beside,-Jessy!

She knew what it felt like to tremble like that before touching someone -- desire so acute that it became despair.

Sometimes...you can cry until there's nothing wet in you. You can scream and curse to where your throat rebels and ruptures. You can pray, all you want, to whatever god you think will listen. And, still it makes no difference. It goes on, with no sign as to when it might release you. And you know that if it ever did relent...it would not be because it cared.

It was long since I had longed for anything and the effect on me was horrible.

There is an aching that is worse than any pain.

There they lay, but not in the forgetfulness of the previous night. She was seeking and he was seeking, they raged and contorted their faces and bored their heads into each others bosom in the urgency of seeking something, and their embraces and their tossing limbs did not avail to make them forget, but only reminded them of what they sought

Be with me always - take any form - drive me mad! only do not leave me in this abyss, where I cannot find you! Oh, God! it is unutterable! I can not live without my life! I can not live without my soul!

You kill me, Rose," he said melodramatically. "Every day is agony without you. Empty. Alone. I pine for you, wondering if you're even still alive.

If I place love above everything, it is because for me it is the most desperate, the most despairing state of affairs imaginable.

I will indulge my sorrows, and give way to all the pangs and fury of despair.

There is only one thing I want. I would like to be seriously ill, and to hear nothing more about him for at least a week. Why doesn't something happen to me? Why do I have to go through all this? If only I had never set eyes on him!

The human heart dares not stay away too long from that which hurt it most. There is a return journey to anguish that few of us are released from making.

I want you to take away the hope because that's the thing that's killing me.

Moon! Moon! I am prone before you. Pity me, and drench me in loneliness.

I'm a silly little needy person sometimes, and I crouch in a room all alone and think of all the people that I wish were with me.

Whether goest, griefe? where I am wont.

When I'm in pain and grief and despair, my throat is clenched and my heart hurts.

Still desiring, we live without hope.

I just want some time, Mikhail, to think things through. It’s frightening, the way I am about you. I think about you every minute; I want to touch you, just to know I can, to feel you beneath my fingers. It’s as if you crawled into my head and my heart, even my body, and I can’t get you out.