Claire Of The Sea Light Quotes
"Lost now was a good friend, whom Nozias had greeted for years as they walked past each other, before dawn, on their way out to sea."
"Nozias had slept in longer than usual, contemplating the impossible decision he’d always known that he would one day have to make: to whom, finally, to give his daughter."
"A sweltering Saturday morning in the first week of May."
"Claire was still lying on a cot in their single-room shack."
"Ville Rose was home to about eleven thousand people, five percent of them wealthy or comfortable."
"The town had a flower-shaped perimeter that, from the mountains, looked like the unfurling petals of a massive tropical rose."
"During the week, Claire went to the École Ardin, where she received a charity scholarship."
"Nozias enjoyed the singsong and her hard work and missed it during her holidays from school."
"It was no longer like in the old days, when he and his friends would put a net in the water for an hour or so, then pull it out full of big, mature fish."
"You had to go out nearly every day, even on Fridays, and even as the seabed was disappearing."
"He feared being lost at sea or getting hit by a car, or being struck with a terrible disease that would separate them forever."
"Claire did not have that many things, only two navy-blue skirts and two white blouses for school, the pink birthday dress she was wearing and the one he’d had made before it, her nightdress, her notebook and reading primers."
"His daughter was now Madame Gaëlle’s daughter."
"The day of the motto taxi accident, though, the fabric vendor was the sole owner of that tragedy."
"The rest of the time, he went out to sea at the crack of dawn and always came back with some cornmeal or eggs."
"She loved that this child would connect them through time and that she would be born during their very first year of marriage."
"Standing there, watching him disappear behind the almond trees, she felt the muscles in her back tighten."
"You’re chilling in all this ice while we’re here boiling in hell."
"Truth is, Homme à Homme is not the show I wanted to do."
"An eye for an eye. Another bandit has been erased from the face of this earth."
"I don’t want people to take me for an imbecile."
"For Claire, so I can help her with her lessons."
"Don’t be dramatic, Louise. We are not on your show here."
"If I did what you did, I would remove myself from my position."
"One of his favorite things to say to her was that she was like a starfish."
"The night Gaëlle Lavaud’s husband died, she thought that everyone should die."
"She had not felt the kind of relief she’d expected."
"She wished she’d never let her daughter, not even for one minute, out of her sight."
"After Rose died, she would often think back to the first time she had to leave her for a few hours."
"She could not ever risk dying and being buried in a cold place."
"Tell me, Flore Voltaire, we are ready to hear your story."
"The house would then dislodge from the earth, and she would open the door and peek outside and the water would be like a black sheet all around her."
"Please be nice to Madame and do everything she tells you."
"Continue to do well in school and you will grow up to be a smart and important woman."
"And don’t ever forget your papa because I will never forget you."
"Love is like kerosene. The more you have, the more you burn."
"Sometimes while her father was at sea, she would walk through the open market and pretend that she was one of those children sent to buy provisions to bring home to a mother."
"Salt was life, she would often hear the adults say."
"Maybe if she ate enough salt, she would finally understand why her father wouldn’t let her wander."
"Every now and again one of the vendors would shout, 'Just like her mother!'"
"If only trees could move. With trees, you’d have to be the one who moved around them."
"But talking wasn’t everything. Who cared if you could talk, if you decided to get up and leave?"
"She must walk like her mother too, and when she was a woman, a true Madame, when her adult voice came in, would she sound like her mother too?"
"But she wouldn’t spend all her time there; she would come out every day to watch the beach."
"She would go where he would never think to come and find her."