Along The Infinite Sea Quotes
"All you really need to know about the Paris Ritz is this: by the middle of 1937, Coco Chanel was living in a handsome suite on the third floor, and the bartender—an intuitive mixologist named Frank Meier—had invented the Bloody Mary sixteen summers earlier to cure a Hemingway hangover."
"Paris had everything I needed, everything I loved, and Berlin in 1937 was no place for a liberal-minded woman nurturing a young child and an impossible rift in her marriage."
"Maybe no good could come from visiting the bar at the Paris Ritz; maybe you were doomed to commit some frivolous and irresponsible act."
"But Johann—my husband—wasn’t around that night. I tiptoed in through the unfashionable Place Vendôme entrance on my brother’s arm instead."
"Nick and I understood each other: first, because we were both Americans living in Paris, and second, because we shared a little secret together, the kind of secret you could never, ever share with anyone else."
"Her handshake was slender and lacked conviction. She slipped her arm through Nick’s and whispered in his ear, and they shimmered off together to the bar inside a haze of expensive perfume."
"I had committed a kind of adultery of the heart, hadn’t I, and since I couldn’t bear the thought of adultery in any form, I learned to ignore the false alarm when it rang and rang and rang."
"‘Because, Miss Schuyler,’ she says softly, ‘twenty-eight years ago, I drove for my life across the German border inside that car, and I left a piece of my heart inside her. And now I think it’s time to bring her home. Don’t you?’"
"The world needs brawn as well as brain. And the girls certainly don’t mind, do they? I mean, what self-respecting woman wants a man hanging around who’s smarter than she is?"
"I watched Nick’s back disappear into the crowd, and I was about to tell Charles that he didn’t need to worry, that Nick didn’t really look all that happy with his companion and Charles might want to give the delectably disinterested Miss Byrne another try in an hour."
"‘My God,’ it said, a little slurry. ‘If it isn’t the baroness herself.’"
"Because, my dear. I can’t wait to see what you do next."
"Isn’t it? But I don’t like to close my eyes."
"You’re the only one who can do it. The rest of us have to stay here."
"I don’t have the slightest idea what you mean, and why not one of you perfectly able-bodied men can help me get this man to safety, but we don’t have a minute to waste arguing."
"Stop. You’re not flirting with me, please. You came three millimeters away from death just now."
"No, I am not flirting. But you are beautiful. A statement of fact."
"You think you know men, but you only know cads, because the cads are the only ones brash enough to take you on. You don’t know the first thing about a man capable of a great love."
"Any unearned gift makes you cynical, unless you’re a psychopath."
"In the end, you know, he just wants to get into bed with you. That’s what they’re after."
"When had I evaporated into this sapless young lady, observing life, living wholly on the inside, waiting for everything to happen to me?"
"You must have some special talent, besides nursing. Show it to me."
"I will remember this always, the smell of him, cigarettes and champagne and salt warmth; the strength of his hand around mine, the rhythm of his breath, the rough texture of sand beneath my head."
"It is beautiful, a kind of dreamy beauty, like a painting of someone’s memory."
"They found these hollows in the ash, the hardened ash, and so they had the good idea to pour plaster of Paris into these hollows, and when it dried and they chipped away the molds, there remained these exact perfect casts of the people who had died, who had been buried alive in the ash. You can see the terror in their faces. And that, my Annabelle, is when you realize that this thing was real, that it actually happened, this unthinkable thing."
"The dog, he had no idea. He must have thought he was being punished."
"I love your chivalry. You talk like a man from a hundred years ago."
"I thought it was all on the surface. He tasted like he smelled, of champagne and cigarettes, only richer and wetter, alive."
"I have never in my life felt such terror as I did when I saw you lying on that beach this morning in your white nightgown, surrounded by the rocks and that damned treacherous Pointe du Dragon."
"I was beginning to think you had this all planned out."
"I care because I stood in your shoes twenty-nine years ago, and God knows I could have used a little decent advice. Someone to keep me from making so many goddamned mistakes."
"I want to look out in the morning and see the water, and think about the Romans and the Etruscans crossing the harbors, and Hannibal with his elephants, and Dido waiting for Aeneas. And Napoleon’s ships sneaking across to Alexandria, and Nelson coming after him."
"I never imagined you could mate like that, like beasts, feverish and deep, and I cried out that yes, yes, I liked it very much."
"Like most adolescent obsessions, this had faded over time, but I’d never quite lost the dread entirely. It had hovered like a ghost in the back of my heart, sometimes howling and rattling its chains, and sometimes quiet."
"You don’t know that, Annabelle. You simply have to trust me."
"I am not one of your Christian saints, but I am a fair man. It seems to me that since I am the first man you have ever had in your bed, it is only justice that you are the last woman I will have in mine."
"Because you are Annabelle. I can either be the man who deserves the love of Annabelle de Créouville, for whose happiness this fidelity is essential, or I will have to do without her. And since it seems I cannot do without you... well... So there it is."
"I have been pondering my own selfishness, I suppose."
"Because you are an innocent, Annabelle, and for all my crimes I had never yet corrupted the innocent."
"The universe is beautiful. Look at us here, the two of us, finding each other among billions."
"You do not understand a word I have said, Mademoiselle. Nothing could be worse than such audacity. The universe would then be ten times against us."
"Liebling, if you think I am capable of any rational thought at this moment, then I fear you have still much more to learn about this business of making love."
"You’re like me, aren’t you? You just can’t help yourself."
"You never do see it coming, do you? A shock like that."
"His wife," I said, after a pause. "Of course."
"They’re like worms, you know, they’ll try to find a way to wiggle off, any way they can."
"Every man alive, even dear old Peter, would happily get his leg up on another woman if he could, and if he thought he could get away with it."
"I knew exactly where he existed in my heart; I had no idea where he existed in the universe."
"It is impossible to be lonely when there are children about."
"The knowledge that you were the fleetest animal in the pack, and who cares if you get to stand in the winner’s circle with the flashbulbs popping and the garland looped around your neck?"
"Pepper doesn’t write letters. She writes the occasional thank-you note, when she has to, but the humility and patience of letter writing don’t exactly flow like milk and honey in her veins."
"There’s always something a little overgrown about Florida, isn’t there? As if the landscape is just waiting for its chance to take over again."
"That’s why it’s useful to marry a man who has had children already. You see what a clever girl you are?"
"I hadn’t even kissed him. I arrived every Tuesday morning for Frieda’s lesson, and had lunch with Johann afterward, though we took no more tours of the apartment and he hurried back to the embassy after driving me home in the black Mercedes."
"But at that moment, while the baby kicked softly in my belly, and the sheets smelled warmly of Johann, I loved his face too much to think him otherwise."
"You never knew what to believe. You never knew for certain if a man was a hero or a villain or an ordinary human being."
"I forced away the image of Stefan on the telephone, fresh from the prison where they had sent him after he crossed the border into Germany on the twenty-ninth of August, listening to Nick Greenwald explain that Annabelle de Créouville was not waiting faithfully for him in Paris."
"I pictured Stefan’s shocked dark eyes, his gaunt face."
"It seemed God had not intended me for Stefan, after all. He had intended me for Johann von Kleist, who had lost so much in his thirty-eight years, and needed a fresh young wife to comfort him."
"But, as usual, I had misunderstood. It seemed God had not intended me for Stefan, after all."
"It was just a surprise, that’s all. You should have told me."
"I wonder whether it is really Berlin you object to."
"You speak as if Germany is the only place where this happens."
"I don’t know," she said. "I think they’ve managed to order things rather well, haven’t they?"
"I wanted a father for my child. I wanted a partner to share my life with."
"You honestly think I would make some kind of move on my mother’s houseguest? My mother’s pregnant houseguest?"
"She stopped playing her cello when Dad was diagnosed, just stopped cold turkey."
"A woman has her needs. If you know what I mean."
"I like sex. Actually, I love sex. I think sex is fucking terrific, excuse the pun, when it’s done right."
"How could I say things to him that weren’t true? It was like lying to yourself. There was no point."
"I don’t mind talking to Johann, if it helps you. I just didn’t want you to want me to do it."
"I couldn’t think of anything to say. Not one word to say to him, to Stefan."
"Then you’d better the hell divorce the lousy Nazi bastard, or I’ll never speak to you again."
"I thought you would be drunk and angry, if I saw you again. I thought you would hate the sight of me."
"I am drunk and angry, Annabelle. I am so angry I cannot breathe, sometimes."
"There was nothing I wouldn’t have forgiven you for, if you’d asked me."
"Because I was scared to death, Annabelle. I thought, She will run away; she won’t understand."
"It is already done. I am not going to ask you to divorce your husband. We are not going to fuck like a pair of fugitives."
"They cannot actually arrest me without consulting the French authorities first, and the French authorities are not particularly inclined to cooperate with requests from the German ones."
"He is so tall, I thought, so large and formidable. He commands an army. And he cannot ask me a question."
"After the disastrous April visit, however, I began to creep over the invisible line that separated his space and mine, inch by inch, until I lay sprawled every night in the center of the bed, like a defiant starfish."
"It is done, he said, we are man and wife again."
"She didn’t say where she was going, I’m afraid, and I never had the chance to ask her."
"What kind of mother is Annabelle Dommerich, to inspire such illogical concern for her welfare?"
"The beeswax of others! It gives you a charge, doesn’t it, a burst of not-too-commendable energy to plow right past your own tribulations and frolic about in the muck of someone else’s."
"I knew he had a mistress in Paris, a married woman, and he had gone to see her during the summer."
"I admit, I went to see him, but we never even kissed. I loved him so, and I never so much as kissed him."
"He may have broken the law, but his cause was just."
"I’ve got another personal question for you, Schuyler."
"You never know what's really going on in someone else's marriage."
"Nothing's ever quite what you expect, is it? Even something you've wanted for years."
"Dollars to doughnuts, she looks like hell. But then Susan looks remarkably like hell, too."
"But I’ll bet you do, if you’re willing to admit it."
"I won’t let you barricade me outside your skin."
"It’s funny, nothing’s ever quite what you expect, is it?"
"We’ve been happy here, haven’t we? In spite of everything."
"Coffee is like doughnuts: even a bad batch is better than no batch at all."
"You have the rush of falling in love, the chemical combustion of mutual attraction... And then there are babies and cracker crumbs left in the sheets, there is stomach flu and flatulence and hangovers."
"Sweetheart, this doesn’t mean your parents don’t love each other. Mine do, in their way, against all odds and affairs."
"You’re all grown up. Your father’s been dead for a year. Let her have some happiness, if this is what makes her happy."