The Essex Serpent Quotes
"A young man walks down by the banks of the Blackwater under the full cold moon."
"He’s been drinking the old year down to the dregs, until his eyes grew sore and his stomach turned."
"I’ll just go down to the water," he said, and kissed the nearest cheek: "I’ll be back before the chimes."
"It’s cold, and he ought to feel it, but he’s full of beer and he’s got on his good thick coat."
"I’ll take a cup o’ kindness yet," he sings in his sweet chapel tenor, then laughs, and someone laughs back.
"Winter comes like a blow to the back of his neck: he feels it penetrate his shirt and go into his bones."
"Nothing to fear in the Blackwater, nothing to repent: only a moment of confusion in the darkness and far too much to drink."
"Time was being served behind the walls of Newgate jail, and wasted by philosophers in cafés on the Strand."
"Across the city in terraces and tenements, in high society and low company and in the middle classes, time was spent and squandered, eked out and wished away."
"The sensation was decently suppressed, but all the same she could name it: it was not happiness, precisely, nor even contentment, but relief."
"She was tall, and not slender: her eyes also were gray."
"In due course Luke Garrett grew familiar with Francis, the Seabornes’ black-haired silent son."
"The death certificate signed, and all that remained of Michael Seaborne resting elsewhere, there was no sound reason for Garrett to make his way to Foulis Street; but he woke each morning with one purpose in mind."
"Cora, who refused to wear anything that might restrict her waist, who’d raked her hands through her hair and stuffed it into a hat, who hadn’t worn jewelry since she tugged the pearls from her ears a month before—was not offended."
"And what’s more, we can help. I know just the family for you!"
"A penny apiece, that's right, and warm work besides."
"Knowing the value of silence, Will refused to speak."
"I cannot see the ether, yet I feel it enter and depart."
"Few things turned the heart to eternity more surely than fear."
"It was an unwritten sheet of paper, and against it the bare branches were black."
"Everything under that white sky was made of the same substance."
"The past few weeks had not always been so happy."
"No other man had loved her, and so she could not judge."
"She supposed there must have been other times when she’d laughed alone."
"A kind of gurgling bubbled from her throat and came out in a shameless peal of laughter."
"Something was rotten in the village of Aldwinter."
"We have come here to mortify our flesh, not take pride in it."
"The goddess Phoebe, come to acknowledge our petition!"
"I’ve never known her happier, though sometimes she remembers she ought not to be."
"I think it possible to put flesh on the bones of our terrors."
"I’m thirsty, I’m always thirsty—for everything, everything!"
"You speak as if we were in the Dark Ages still."
"I’ve sold my soul, though I’m afraid it didn’t fetch too high a price."
"It’s a sort of blindness, or a choice to be mad."
"To sin is to try, but fall short. Of course we cannot get it right each time—and so we try again."
"There is nothing to be afraid of, except ignorance. What seems frightening is just waiting for you to shine a light on it."
"If my body had responded as if it had been the bird, was my perception of it really false, even if it had only been the leaves?"
"There may still be animals alive today just like those we find in the rock."
"It’s all right—he did it to me once, and I slept better that night than in years."
"It might, but it might not, though I don’t suppose it would do any harm."
"There are some things which I think we all must try to do, or else try not to do. But there are others we must work out for ourselves."
"Give me an afternoon guiding Cracknell back to the God who never left him over a thousand Drury Lane dinners."
"I can’t keep playing it over and over," said Joanna at the piano, rolling her eyes at Francis.
"She’s right, you know," said Martha, sighing and shaking out her green dress. "She’ll break your foot— she’s heavy—won’t you have me instead?"
"No: I can’t—I’ve forgotten the steps." Joanna played on—the clock ticked—still he did not move.
"I don’t think," said Cora, "that I ever knew them." Her hand fell from his shoulder—she stepped back, and said, "Stella, I have disappointed you."
"Poor show altogether," said Charles Ambrose, looking with regret into his empty glass.
"Best stop playing now, I think," said Will, turning to his daughter, giving her a look which was almost an apology.
"I don’t know the tune!" said Will, "I never heard it before—"
"Shall I try one like this?" said Jo, and the piano slowed, grew rather languorous; Martha said, "No! No—not like that."
"Should I stop?" said Joanna, raising her hands from the keys, watching her father. How odd they looked, simply standing there! They might have been John and James, uncertain if they’d committed some little household sin.
"No: play on, play on!" said Luke, turning the sharp points of his mischief on himself and wincing as he did it: he would’ve liked to slam the piano shut.
"Sometimes, imagining a sealed envelope making its way to my door on the back of a postman’s bike, I grew anxious: would she be amused—would she be moved—might she ignore it and go on blithely as before?"
"Knowing her, I thought the last most likely: it was difficult to penetrate her good temper, or move her beyond a general display of affection to everyone she knew."
"You might be sold a bad oyster, but keep your wits about you and you’ll all come home again."
"Sometimes she draws his head down to her shoulder and cradles it as though the disease were his."
"No one ever matched him for the minuteness of his skill, and for his courage: if he could only have attended to it himself I believe in a year’s time no one would know how badly he’d been injured."
"I’ve seen enough, and if you let me return to my natural habitat I’ll do what I can to carry out your every command."
"They tell me I should count to ten—wait, but can you hear that? What is it—what can I hear?"
"It’s no use—Spencer has tried—I’m long past redemption."
"I’ve never kept a diary before—nothing ever happens to me worth the trouble of writing it down."
"I’ve imagined customers on the steps of the bookshop peering in at the window, wondering what had kept me, knowing I am never late—but of course no one was waiting."
"I turned the postcard over and over in my hands, and lifted it up as if I could smell salt rising from the marsh."
"I turned off the lights and made my way home."
"How can I explain the impression it had on me, to see it high up on the incline, the sun blazing from its windows and pricking the arrow of its weathervane?"
"It’s only the heat, and the ringing in your ears, no one knows you’re here."
"Do you know where to go? Let me show you the way."
"The beating behind my eyes stopped like a clock wound down, leaving in its place emptiness and release."
"Everything’s ready for you—all your things are there."
"I told you I’d look after him, didn’t I. Well, I did, and here he is."
"The rock under my feet turned out to be sand after all."
"There are some things best kept for morning, and a kinder light."