The Winter Sea Quotes
"I am the master of my fate; I am the captain of my soul."
"A home. The word had beckoned to her then, as it did now."
"I’d never been a fast writer, and five hundred words in one day was, to me, a good effort."
"It was good to walk out in the wind, with my hair blowing loose and the spray from the sea carried up from the breakers that crashed on the empty pink beach."
"It was a nice way to feel, after spending the past year in transit, bouncing from author appearances to writers’ conferences, one hotel to another, and then the months of fruitless work in France."
"I didn’t usually talk work with total strangers, and I wasn’t sure what made me do it now, except maybe that I hadn’t had enough sleep, and his eyes were engagingly warm when he smiled."
"But life, if nothing else, had taught her promises weren’t always to be counted on, and what appeared at first a shining chance might end in bitter disappointment."
"Every day he kept the same routine: his morning draught, and then a private hour in which Sophia thought he might have prayed or tended to his business, then in fair or foul weather he would walk along the cliffs above the sea."
"It is too far, and over ground too rough. Your slippers would be ruined."
"She is most uncommonly healthy. I have no objection to letting her go, if you will see she does take care, when on the cliffs, that she goes not too near the edge."
"I wonder if he simply pays the countess his respects, or if he means to come ashore?"
"You may well," he said, "be seeing even more of me this year than you have done. I have a weakness for good company, and God knows my own crew does ill supply it."
"What kind of a madman builds his home right at the edge of a cliff?"
"I would ride today," the countess said, "Will you come with me, Sophia?"
"I think he’s hurt himself," he said, and sure enough, Angus came limping towards us, the ball in his mouth, but one front paw held painfully.
"And I can’t get the stove to start again," I finished in frustration. "And because it’s hooked up to the water heater, that means I have no hot water for washing, and—"
"He’s a typical man. Never picks up a book if the writer’s a woman."
"I’ve been walking with him in graveyards to search out the headstones of great-great-great grandfathers."
"I’m all the time driving old ladies to Kirk on a Sunday. You’ve nothing to fear."
"You writers and your insecurities. Honestly. You said yourself you felt you were creating something wonderful."
"That’s the second time you’ve done that, nearly stepped clean off the path."
"I knew what it looked like before I had seen it—a circular shaft, like a giant’s well, cut at the edge of the cliff, where the sea had eroded the walls of a mammoth cave till the cave’s roof had collapsed, leaving only a strip of stone bridging the cleft at its entrance, through which the waves sprayed with such force that the water appeared to be boiling below when I stood at the edge to look down."
"Graham stood at my side with his hands in his pockets, and standing there he, too, seemed part of a memory, and I wondered if this was what people felt like when they started going insane."
"On one level, I took this in quite calmly, and yet on the other my thoughts swirled as fiercely as the waves below me."
"I knew it was too late. I had already fallen. But I couldn’t tell him."
"The sense of déjà vu stayed with me on the long walk back."
"I wasn’t holding out much hope, when I sat down to write."
"It felt the way a medium must feel, when they were channeling the dead."
"My answer came a bit too fast. 'Yes, please.'"
"Standing in my kitchen, well back from the window so he wouldn’t catch me watching him, I saw him take a pebble from the path and skip it deftly out to sea."
"It was good to step in from the grey mist and rain to the warmth of the bright narrow hall."
"You realize Stuart thinks of you as being his? I know. I’m not."
"I’m not about to ravish ye. I did but think to try the water."
"Christ, you’re wetted through. Come out and let the sunshine dry you, else her ladyship will have my head for giving ye the fever."
"Aye, well, anyone would have been better than the Stewarts."
"I’d wager what you’ll write about Sophia, at its essence, will be truth."
"I don’t know. I thought he read it, somewhere."
"I would be serious. The countess will want to be seeing ye married, for your sake. Will you take a husband?"
"Where'er I go, my Soul shall stay with thee: 'Tis but my Shadow that I take away."
"Ye told me once I might yet walk a ship's deck."
"What can they all be thinking of? They must come now. They must, or else the moment will be lost."
"It does not travel with me, lass, across the water. Where you are, it will remain. Ye’ll not be on your own."
"Ye were mine from the moment I first saw ye."
"Let the devil bar my way, I will come back to ye."
"Ye needn’t look so nervous. ’Tis no crime for me to watch my wife prepare for bed."
"Damn the Bishop. He has no say in our affairs."
"The Duke of Hamilton’s proposals were a waste of ink and paper, and he knew it when he wrote them."
"Before this year is out, the king will be on Scottish soil again, and I will be here with him, and he’ll have his crown, and there will be a chance for you and me, then, to begin a life together."
"For God’s sake, what can they all be thinking of? They must come now. They must, or else the moment will be lost."
"I do not trust it. It does seem a pleasant sight in summer, but it wears a different face, and one I do not like to look at, in December."
"No battle can be called a victory if the king is lost."
"Ye have to watch the whole field, lass, and use your wits afore your weapons."
"A man, when he has fallen on hard times, should seek his friends. Not sell them to his enemies."
"Ye cannot start a battle, lass, by thinking ye will lose it."
"If there was no winter, we could never hope for spring."
"A soldier must first step upon the battlefield if he does mean to cross it."
"You cannot ever say which way this world will take you."
"You must not worry, Mr Moray is an honorable man."
"He is much more than that. He is my husband."
"History is really just a series of 'what ifs'."
"It is a dreadful thing to rob a child of its innocence."
"And if you would defy your wiser elders, you could do much worse than marry Mr Moray."
"How can you write a book without a proper plan?"
"No crown is worth what I have witnessed here at Malplaquet. What is a crown?"
"Will ye wed me for a second time, or have ye had a chance to see the folly of your choice?"
"She will be there without it. Every time I look at—"
"I would not have you think you cannot change your mind."