The Falls Quotes
"No socks! With fancy shoes like that. A giveaway."
"The hour should have been dawn except that shifting walls of fog, mist, and spray rising in continuous billowing clouds out of the 180-foot Niagara Gorge obscured the sun."
"But you have to interfere, or try. Can’t let a man—or a woman—commit suicide, the unforgiveable sin, before your staring eyes."
"Maybe that’s the promise of The Falls? The secret?"
"Like we’re sick of ourselves. Mankind. This is the way out, only a few have the vision."
"Every shadow and echo of every memory erased."
"I’m a bride who has become a widow in less than a day."
"Ariah wasn’t yet a widow, but still a bride."
"You begin with a wish, and the wish comes true, and you can’t shut off the wish."
"I can no more doubt the existence of God and Jesus than I can doubt the existence of my family, or you."
"He who’d prided himself on eluding the wiles of featherbrained simpering-coy females for years."
"Possibly, stricken with shyness. Embarrassment. And the woman in turn stiff, self-conscious, blinking rapidly and her green-glassy eyes wavering from his eyes."
"Yet he’d believed (almost!) that he loved her."
"For had not God enjoined mankind to Increase and multiply."
"The shame of it would paralyze him otherwise."
"In fact he may have slapped her, not with the flat of his hand exactly, flailing out in instinctive self-defense."
"A delirium of sleep washed over him like filthy frothy water."
"You would think, as local Indian tribes had thought, that it was a living thing that must be placated by sacrifices."
"Foolish woman, who are you to be spared My justice?"
"He left our room sometime before dawn. I think."
"Gilbert wouldn’t do such a thing. I know what you’re saying: by ‘fall’ you mean ‘jump.’"
"You’d have to know Gilbert Erskine, to know that he wouldn’t have done such a thing."
"If my husband is gone, he’s gone. How can that be helped? How can you help me?"
"Gilbert turned his back on me, but he wouldn’t have turned his back on God."
"You don’t understand! Gilbert would never have done such a desperate thing, he’s a man of God."
"But Gilbert would never have done such a thing, he’s a man of God."
"No hint of—why he might wish to leave you? Where he might be going?"
"I don’t care to notify anyone. I can’t bear a crowd of relatives around me."
"Foolish woman, don’t despair. My justice is My mercy."
"Poor bastard’s an insomniac, since the war. Likes to hear from his buddies."
"Burnaby wasn’t a Christian but he behaved like a Christian is supposed to behave."
"Marriage, family. What else is there? You had to grow up. You had to accept it."
"People behave in extreme ways, after extreme shocks."
"It’s better for your daughter, in these circumstances, to be involved in activity, I think. Instead of just waiting helplessly, passively, at the hotel."
"That’s what you missed, grandfather. Ordinary life."
"You never visit me, Dirk. Almost, I’d think you were avoiding me."
"Dirk smiled. Claudine wasn’t a woman to beg."
"The Niagara River seemed no different from any other wide, swift-flowing river."
"Once a boat moved into the Deadline, its occupants were doomed."
"He’d been a popular young bachelor-socialite, he’d bought a townhouse in the exclusive residential neighborhood of Luna Park, an expensive car and a new sailboat and a forty-foot yacht."
"You only live once. You didn’t get killed in Italy. You have the looks of a taller, more manly Alan Ladd. Why shouldn’t everyone adore you?"
"What exactly did it mean You only live once."
"No, she wasn’t frightened: she was annoyed. This was her home, and this telephone number was hers, as well as her husband’s."
"They were married, and possibly the bride was pregnant."
"They were married, and God had nothing to do with their happiness."
"They were married, and all of the remainder of their lives would be their honeymoon. They were certain!"
"They were married, and in marriage you expect children. Sooner or later."
"Being in love with Dirk Burnaby, being so happy in love, Ariah had to bite her tongue often for fear of speaking intemperately."
"They were married, and Dirk Burnaby gave his red-haired wife the most exquisite gift she’d ever received: a Steinway spinet made of cherrywood."
"They were married, and the woman who was Ariah’s mother-in-law, Claudine Burnaby, gave notice, through Dirk’s sisters Clarice and Sylvia, that she was "thinking seriously of disinheriting" her renegade son."
"You don’t marry for money, you marry for love. You marry for life."
"In weak moments Ariah recalled the sting of her father’s words."
"Ariah secretly liked it that her husband had been 'disinherited' because of his marriage."
"She’d never have another one of these again, she vowed. Oh, it had hurt! They say you forget labor pains but she, Ariah, wasn’t going to forget. Ever."
"Ariah understood, she wasn’t jealous. Not just yet."
"What has brought us here?—d’you mean literally here? I’ve brought us here, darling. By your request."
"But love is chancy. It’s a roll of the dice."
"You won’t leave me for a while now, I guess? Now Baby is here."
"God, thank You. Now I am redeemed, and will ask nothing of You ever again."
"Well, Ariah was grateful. For her father’s words, however grudging. At a time in her life when she no longer needed them."
"Yet one generation grinds another into the earth. Into bones, dust. Into oblivion."
"Sometimes to act in haste is not to act unwisely, I see. You are blessed in your husband and child."
"It’s strange that anyone can be so young, isn’t it, and be human?"
"This damned boat! Rocking, lurching. It was seasickness she feared, more than drowning."
"Why are you here. What do you want from us. Go away, back to your spider’s web."
"But my prejudices are me! I love my prejudices."
"It was only logical, wasn’t it? Knowing that your first-born might be snatched from you at any time by an Act of God, you must have a second child."
"She would become, through the years, a woman who expected the worst, to relieve herself of the anxiety of hope."
"A daughter. Take my sons, and give me a daughter in their place, I will never beg for anything again O God I swear."
"For in retrospect, the most random and desperate toss of the dice can be made to seem inevitable."
"You’d have thought she was furious with him. 'Bullshit. It’s not so romantic and ‘mythic’ if you know that these so-called sacrifices were probably just kids nobody wanted—orphans, or weird crippled kids. Expendable females.'"
"Ariah wasn’t 'close' with her mother, though the Littrells drove frequently to Niagara Falls to visit at 7 Luna Park, and, at least once a year, the Burnabys drove to Troy for one or another 'festive' occasion."
"How could he explain to the Woman in Black My friends are your enemies. My friends can’t be my enemies."
"It’s obscene to know too much, if you can’t do anything about it."
"‘Fate’ comes to us, Ariah. Whether we’re rich or poor."
"Love Canal. As Dirk Burnaby would say, "It isn’t a canal. It was never a canal. And it has nothing to do with love.""
"Never adultery. Never an adulterous husband. Nor did I fall in love with that woman."
"These ugly rumors don’t concern just you, they concern the Burnaby family, too."
"Into the underworld then I descended. Where you can’t see, can’t breathe. Suffocating in black muck. In shame."
"Where it’s deliberate, it’s murder. It’s beyond negligence. ‘Depraved indifference to human life.’"
"At least, we’ve never pretended to be friends. There isn’t that pretense to maintain."
"I’m not anyone’s ‘lover,’ darling. I’m your husband."
"All marriage—all love—must be a folie à deux. Otherwise, there would exist neither marriage nor love."
"Into the underworld that opened to receive me."
"You can afford a conscience, Dirk. You’re a Burnaby. But that won’t last forever."
"I’m not thinking about that. I’m thinking about justice."
"Justice! Like conscience, this merited a look, of alarm."
"In what’s called life, there is a continuous stream of time like the river rushing to The Falls, and beyond. No escape from that river."
"Had to admit, he missed poker nights. God damn there was a hole in his heart, he missed those bastards."
"You might not redeem yourself by accepting responsibility for your actions, but you can’t redeem yourself otherwise."
"‘Coincidence’?—hell, no. As Einstein says, God doesn’t play dice with the universe."
"Family is all there is on earth. Seeing there’s no God on earth."
"Oh, shit: I will always regret it. But it had to be."
"Poor fool. Threw away your life, and for what?"
"Never cry. Not in public, and not in this house. If ever I catch one of you kids crying, I will personally—knock your blocks off. Get it?"
"As Juliet said, 'There’s a curse on us Burnabys.'"
"It hurts too much to think. There’s no future in it."
"No one in any of the expertly piloted excursion boats was in danger from The Falls."
"Sometimes, hearing his fiancée and his mother excitedly discussing the wedding, which was never less than The Wedding, Royall felt like an intruder."
"If they ask of him, tell them: It happened before I was born."