The Paying Guests is a 2014 book by Welsh novelist Sarah Waters.
The plot takes place in the years after World War I in the affluent area of Champion Hill, just south of London.
I have picked great quotes from The Paying Guests novel for you.
Table of Contents
The Paying Guests Quotes by Sarah Waters
“Marriages are like pianos. They go in and out of tune.” ~ Sarah Waters (quotes from The Paying Guests).
“She was at her truest, it seemed to her, in these tingling moments – these moments when, paradoxically, she was also at her most anonymous.” ~ Sarah Waters (quotes from The Paying Guests).
“If I were to die today, she thought, and someone were to think over my life, they’d never know that moments like this, here on the Horseferry Road, between a Baptist chapel and a tobacconist’s, were the truest things in it.” ~ Sarah Waters (quotes from The Paying Guests).
“It looks like the house of Ali Baba! Or the Moulin Rouge! Or the Taj Mahal! If only she would decide on a country and have done with it. Is that what passes for modern décor?” ~ Sarah Waters (quotes from The Paying Guests).
“The gloss would fade in about five minutes as the surface dried; but everything faded. The vital thing was to make the most of the moments of brightness.” ~ Sarah Waters (quotes from The Paying Guests).
“Well, that was the clerk class for you. They might be completely without culture, but they certainly knew how to make themselves comfortable.” ~ Sarah Waters (quotes from The Paying Guests).
“It was like a cure, being with Lilian. It made one feel like a piece of wax being cradled in a soft, warm palm.” ~ Sarah Waters (quotes from The Paying Guests).
“But for now there was this, and it was enough, it was more than they could have hoped for: the two of them in their stone corner, their dark clothes bleeding into the dusk, lights being kindled across the city, and a few pale stars in the sky.” ~ Sarah Waters (quotes from The Paying Guests).
Other Popular Book Quotes: No Longer Human Quotes from Osamu Dazai and War and Peace Quotes by Leo Tolstoy
Quotes from The Paying Guests by Sarah Waters
“Now the world seemed to her to have become so complex that its problems defied solution. There was only a chaos of conflicts of interest; the whole thing filled her with a sense of futility.” ~ Sarah Waters (quotes from The Paying Guests).
“… she had seemed to be quivering, to be ringing, like a wine glass that had just been struck.” ~ Sarah Waters (quotes from The Paying Guests).
“I’m not so sure about him.” ~ Sarah Waters (quotes from The Paying Guests).
“The scullery roof had sprung a leak: she put down a bowl to catch the drips, but the rainwater spread and darkened, to make treasure maps and Whistler nocturnes of the walls and ceiling.” ~ Sarah Waters (quotes from The Paying Guests).
“What did she want? Frances couldn’t tell. She wasn’t sure she cared any more. There had been too much dancing back and forth. The night had been over-stretched: it had lost its tension.” ~ Sarah Waters (quotes from The Paying Guests).
“She began to teach herself Esperanto, reciting phrases as she polished and swept.” ~ Sarah Waters (quotes from The Paying Guests).
“For was that all, she thought bleakly, that love ever was? Something that saved one from loneliness? A sort of insurance policy against not counting?” ~ Sarah Waters (quotes from The Paying Guests).
Best Quotes from The Paying Guests
“They had no idea how decency, loyalty, courage, how it all shrivelled away when one was frightened.” ~ Sarah Waters (quotes from The Paying Guests).
“When she heard the splash and gurgle of tea being poured from the pot, followed by the rattle of china as he carried the cups to his bedroom, she longed so dismally for a cup of tea of her own that she nearly wept.” ~ Sarah Waters (quotes from The Paying Guests).
“There had been romances in my schooldays–but all my friends had had those; we were forever sending each other Valentines, writing sonnets on the prefect’s eyes… This wasn’t like that. It was a thing of the heart and the head and the body. A real, true thing, grown-up.” ~ Sarah Waters (quotes from The Paying Guests).
“Some things are so frightful that a bit of madness is the only sane response. You know that, don’t you?” ~ Sarah Waters (quotes from The Paying Guests).
“As far as Frances was concerned, gardening was simply open-air housework.” ~ Sarah Waters (quotes from The Paying Guests).
“Oh, Frances, for somebody so clever you can be awfully dull sometimes. Don’t you know the sort of mistake I mean? ~ Sarah Waters (quotes from The Paying Guests).
“I’m sorry you aren’t as brave as you thought you were. But don’t punish me because of it.” ~ Sarah Waters (quotes from The Paying Guests).
Famous The Paying Guests Quotes
“The Barbers had said they would arrive by three. It was like waiting to begin.” ~ Sarah Waters (quotes from The Paying Guests).
“Don’t you like surprises?’ No, Frances didn’t like surprises. She hated the thought of people plotting and planning on her behalf. She loathed the burden of being delighted once the surprise was disclosed.” ~ Sarah Waters (quotes from The Paying Guests).
“The rest of us become narrow and mean when we live falsely. I’m sick to death of living falsely. I’ve been doing it for years.” ~ Sarah Waters (quotes from The Paying Guests).
“Sometimes the shortest journeys take longest, don’t they?” ~ Sarah Waters (quotes from The Paying Guests).
“I barely knew I had skin before I met you.” ~ Sarah Waters (quotes from The Paying Guests).
“… and at last, like a portly matron letting out the laces of her stays, she was herself again.” ~ Sarah Waters (quotes from The Paying Guests).
“And, worst of all, she was trapped with their marriage, their mystifying union, which had evidently passed out of whatever affectionate phase it had recently enjoyed and was already mired in some new quarrel . . . She didn’t care about the details.” ~ Sarah Waters (quotes from The Paying Guests).
“Their friendship sometimes struck Frances as being like a piece of soap-like a piece of ancient kitchen soap that had got worn to the shape of her hand, but which had been dropped to the floor so many times it was never quite free of its bits of cinder.” ~ Sarah Waters (quotes from The Paying Guests).
“She loved these walks through London. She seemed, as she made them, to become porous, to soak in detail after detail; or else, like a battery to become charged. Yes, that was it, she thought, as she turned a corner: it wasn’t a liquid creeping, it was a tingle, something electric, something produced as if by the friction of her shoes against the streets. She was at her truest, it seemed to her, in these tingling moments.” ~ Sarah Waters (quotes from The Paying Guests).
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