A Study In Drowning Quotes
"If you want to see what you are, look into the tide pools at dusk. Look into the sea."
"It began as all things did: a girl on the shore, terrified and desirous."
"Storytelling is an art deserving of greatest reverence, and storytellers ought to be considered guardians of Llyrian cultural heritage."
"What is a mermaid but a woman half-drowned, What a selkie but an unwilling wife, What a tale but a sea-net, snatching up both From the gentle tumult of dark waves?"
"At a certain point I have to let you sink or swim."
"No," Effy said. Outside, the darkness pulsed and seethed.
"Then take it. All right? Call me when you’ve calmed down."
"It was inside the doctor’s office that she’d first learned to call these moments of panic, these slippings, episodes."
"You have to be careful with these," he said. "Only take them when you really need them."
"Her mother had bundled the pills into her purse. They had left his office, walking into a damp spring morning..."
"The rush of waves bathing the rocky shoreline was loud again, oppressive."
"Effy felt her body go stiff again, her short-lived relief curdling into fear."
"The road narrowed, fog closing in on all sides. Effy’s throat tightened."
"But the mistress has requested that you stay in the guest cottage."
"She had expected to hear him stomping through the grass, but everything was unsettlingly silent."
"We must discuss, then, the relationship between women and water. When men fall into the sea, they drown. When women meet the water, they transform."
"I waited for the Fairy King in our marriage bed, but he didn’t know I was wearing a girdle of iron."
"It’s complicated. For starters, Myrddin was the son of a fisherman. It’s not clear whether his parents were even literate, and from what I can find out, he had stopped attending school by age twelve. The idea that someone of his limited education could produce such works is— well, it’s a romantic notion, but it’s highly improbable."
"But it would mean betraying Myrddin. Betraying everything she had believed her whole life, the words and stories she had followed like the point of a compass."
"She wanted so badly to do something valuable for once, to make something beautiful, something that was hers."
"It was the removal of choice that calmed her. There were only two roads ahead of her now, one of them well-trod and dark, the other half-lit and waiting."
"The idea that someone of his limited education could produce such works is— well, it’s a romantic notion, but it’s highly improbable."
"I wish I could say I was surprised to find you rifling through my things, but then, nothing about you has ever surprised me, not really."
"She hadn’t seen them before. There were two red marks where his glasses had dug in, tiny nicks that winged the bridge of his nose."
"You really care more about the truth than you do about being right?"
"I can't tell you it won't be difficult, getting the department to change their minds. But I'll fight for you, Effy. I promise."
"A single paper isn't enough to destroy a myth in one fell swoop."
"Lovely and dangerous and vast beyond mortal comprehension, the sea makes dreamers of us all."
"It’s easier to repair an existing foundation than to build something entirely new."
"There are far more interesting deaths out there."
"All around her there was a stunning, seething silence."
"Effy felt so terribly alone, the house spreading out on all sides like reaching vines."
"The air had turned sharp and fragile and cold, as cold as the heart of winter."
"The pills were meant to be a seawall against her visions."
"Watching a dress disappear around the corner was like staring at a dead crow in your path."
"Morning was the pale gray color of a trout’s belly."
"Her sleeping pills were meant to eliminate even her dreams, to plunge her into total, oblivious blackness."
"It was all black hair and reaching hands and water rising to her throat."
"Effy considered what a suitable trophy would be."
"The unreal world was close to breaking its fetters."
"I can hear the mermaids singing, Beneath the rolling, wanton waves."
"Their hair as lush as meadowsweet, Their maidenheads as ripe for plunder."
"Ianto’s door opened without so much as a shudder."
"It seemed to exist in another world, cold and silent and strange, like a shipwreck on the ocean floor."
"She had no way of knowing, but she felt very certain that the girl in the pictures was dead."
"Effy was not afraid of the ghost. But she was horribly, wretchedly afraid of whatever had killed the woman it had once been."
"The rest of Hiraeth creaked and groaned and swayed, protesting its slow destruction."
"Love conquers all? I suppose I could say that, if I were a romantic."
"No childless woman came for me," she whispered. "But he did."
"The feminine variation of Eupheme, patron saint of storytellers. Most of the time it just felt like a cruel joke."
"He was there with me," Effy said. "He stepped right out of the river."
"My mother did come back for me, in the end," she said in a rush.
"I know you don't believe me," she said. "No one ever has."
"Mothers aren't supposed to hate their children."
"I can't tell you I believe in the Fairy King, Effy. But I believe in your grief and your fear. Isn't that enough?"
"It wasn't until years later, when Effy first read Angharad, that she had learned what really kept the Fairy King at bay."
"You deserve a man, Effy," Master Corbenic had told her once.
"I was a girl when he came for me, beautiful and treacherous, and I was a crown of pale gold in his black hair."
"As long as the Fairy King was real, he could be killed, just as Angharad had vanquished him."
"I believe in the horror or desire that might conjure one," Preston said. "I can't tell you I believe in the Fairy King, Effy. But I believe in your grief and your fear."
"It must have been easier to believe that there was some magic at work— a childhood curse, the pernicious Fair Folk. Something other than ordinary human cruelty."
"He didn’t believe her. Maybe that was for the best."
"No one ever has," Effy said, choking on the words.
"Even in sleep, his mind was turning on so many things."
"It is because a romance is a belief in the impossible: that anything ends happily."
"They felt like a secret, just the way the diary had."
"No wonder Blackmar was so cagey when discussing it."
"But her body seemed to be holding on to her mind with all its might."
"That’s one of Angharad’s most famous lines, and Myrddin didn’t even come up with it."
"She wished she could drift from her own body, to slip out that secret door into the safe, submerged place."
"She watched from the window, counting the guests as they exited their cars, woman trailing gossamer shrugs and men frowning under their mustaches."
"Every new clue she uncovered was like a blow to the back of the head: brisk, sudden, agonizing."
"Finding no traditional breakfast food (much to Effy’s dismay, as she’d hoped for tea to settle her stomach), they ate stuffed olives and tiny fruit tarts that dissolved in sugar on her tongue."
"Effy drew in a breath, now fully irritated at herself for becoming attuned to these inane details."
"If anything, she wanted him to pull her closer."
"Anything can be taken from you, at any moment. Even the past isn’t guaranteed. You can lose that, too, slowly, like water eating away at stone."
"My father never had the chance. And he won’t even get to see me graduate, or read any of my papers, or . . ."
"There were no fairies, no magic, and the world was just ordinary and cruel."
"The color drained from Preston’s face. 'We can’t go down there— it’s all submerged, and we don’t even know if there’s anything of use...'"
"'Preston,' she cut in. 'We need to get into the basement.'"
"'If you tried hard enough, you could believe yourself out of the cold and banal world.'"
"'What you think of as recklessness, I think of as survival. Sometimes it’s not very pretty. Skinned knees and a bloody nose and whatever else. You told me I don’t see myself clearly, but I do. I know what I am. I know that, deep down, there’s not much else to me but surviving. Everything I think, everything I do, everything I am— it’s just one escape act after another.'"
"'You’re not just one thing. Survival is something you do, not something you are. You’re brave and brilliant. You’re the most real, full person I’ve ever met.'"
"'I didn’t want to be another man who uses you. I don’t want you to think of me that way, just a shag on a chaise. I don’t want to be something else that keeps you from sleeping at night.'"
"'I want to take care of you. When we get back to Caer-Isel, the horrible professors and the horrible students... I never want you to have to weather it all alone again.'"
"'The only reason anything matters is because it ends.'"
"'If this is a second Drowning,' she said, 'what are we meant to do?'"
"It appears you were a bit of a problem for the architecture college, Euphemia," Ianto went on.
"Oh no," Ianto said. "This isn't a place for leaving. Things live and die here, but they don't leave."
"We all understand what it's like to be wrecked by it. Even me," Ianto expressed, discussing love.
"Don't be stupid," Effy said. "I'm not leaving you here."
"The world has not been kind to you, Euphemia," the Fairy King said.
"Love is terrible, isn't it?" Ianto said. "That's why the one line became so famous. 'I will love you to ruination.'"
"No," she said, even as her breath came in rough, panicked spurts. "No. I don't want to go with you."
"Every wanting man has that same wound he can use to slip in."
"It was almost easier when the Fairy King took him over entirely. Then I knew to expect his viciousness, and I had my little mortal tricks."
"I invited you here, Preston, in hopes that you might uncover the truth."
"There were times, I confess, that I could have gotten my hands on a mirror. Yet I knew I could not bring myself to use it against my own son."
"Writing that book was like shining a beacon from a lighthouse, I suppose. Are there any ships on the horizon? Will they signal back to me?"
"I saw it," Effy whispered. "I see it. And it saved me."