11 quotes
Here on this ring of grass we have sat together, bound by the tremendous power of some inner compulsion. The trees wave, the clouds pass. The time approaches when these soliloquies shall be shared.
The Waves (1931)
Among the tortures and devastations of life is this then — our friends are not able to finish their stories.
The Waves (1931)
But look — he flicks his hand to the back of his neck. For such gesture one falls hopelessly in love for a lifetime.
The Waves (1931)
I have lost friends, some by death [...] others through sheer inability to cross the street.
The Waves (1931)
We have dined well. The fish, the veal cutlets, the wine have blunted the sharp tooth of egotism. Anxiety is at rest.
The Waves (1931)
‘The flower,’ said Bernard, ‘the red carnation that stood in the vase on the table of the restaurant when we dined together with Percival, is become a six-sided flower; made of six lives.’
The Waves (1931)
For I am more selves than Neville thinks. We are not simple as our friends would have us to meet their needs. Yet love is simple.
The Waves (1931)
Things have dropped from me. I have outlived certain desires; I have lost friends, some by death... others through sheer inability to cross the street.
The Waves (1931)
Yet there are moments when the walls of the mind grow thin; when nothing is unabsorbed, and I could fancy that we might blow so vast a bubble that the sun might set and rise in it and we might take the blue of midday and the black of midnight and be cast off and escape from here and now.
The Waves (1931)
Thus I visited each of my friends in turn, trying, with fumbling fingers, to prise open their locked caskets. I went from one to the other holding my sorrow — no, not my sorrow but the incomprehensible nature of this our life — for their inspection.
The Waves (1931)
You are not listening to me. You are making phrases about Byron. And while you gesticulate, with your cloak, your cane, I am trying to expose a secret told to nobody yet; I am asking you (as I stand with my back to you) to take my life in your hands and tell me whether I am doomed always to cause repulsion in those I love?
The Waves (1931)