Sarah Waters

“And that was all it took. They smiled at each other across the table, and some sort of shift occurred between them.…

— Sarah Waters

I'll burn myself, or I'll cut myself. For a burn or a cut might be shown, might be nursed, might scar or…

— Sarah Waters

Ours is a world which feels so unsettled and dangerous in large ways, whether its terrorism or global financial meltdown or climate…

— Sarah Waters

“Don’t you know that it is the same for locksmiths with spirits as with love? Spirits laugh at them.”

— Sarah Waters

My story is the story of many postwar British families. Upward mobility. A council house and then new affluence.

— Sarah Waters

“What did she want? Frances couldn't tell. She wasn't sure she cared any more. There had been too much dancing back and…

— Sarah Waters

“Don’t you think that queer? That a common coarse-featured woman might drink morphia and be sent to gaol for it, while I…

— Sarah Waters

“Now she has turned up, saying all the things I dreamed she'd say.”

— Sarah Waters

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

— Sarah Waters

“Just so did they want to crush our friendship, now. It was against the rules. I”

— Sarah Waters

Why do gentlemen's voices carry so clearly, when women's are so easily stifled?

— Sarah Waters

“Doesn’t it seem to you, now you are here, that anything might be real, since Millbank is?”

— Sarah Waters

“How easy it was, she thought unhappily as she did it, for men and women. They could stand in a street and…

— Sarah Waters

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

— Sarah Waters

Your twisting is done--you have the last thread of my heart. I wonder: when the thread grows slack, will you feel it?

— Sarah Waters

I'm interested in stories that aren't getting told: it's where my interests lie.

— Sarah Waters

“Perhaps, however, it is the same with spinsters as with ghosts; and one has to be of their ranks in order to…

— Sarah Waters

I was encouraged to be imaginative and read, and it was a great childhood for a budding writer because I had the…

— Sarah Waters

I wouldnt mind being a fly on the wall in a few Victorian parlours.

— Sarah Waters

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

— Sarah Waters

“But my thoughts were more like poisons. I had so many, they made me sick.”

— Sarah Waters

“She let her head sink, until her brow met the varnished glass. How easy it was, she thought unhappily as she did…

— Sarah Waters

“She wore a boiled shirt and a bow-tie, and her hair, though long and bound, was sleek with oil. She was about…

— Sarah Waters

The relationship you have with your mother is like nothing else. They do kind of know everything about you, even though they…

— Sarah Waters

“I would rather visit Selina, than go to Garden Court to visit Helen--for Helen is as full of wedding talk as any…

— Sarah Waters