quotes by Sena Jeter Naslund

"If you meet a woman of whatever complexion who sails her life with strength and grace and assurance, talk to her! And what you will find is that there has been a suffering, that at some time she has left herself for hanging dead."
— Sena Jeter Naslund (Ahab's Wife: Or, The Star-gazer: A Novel)

"That's the way it is in life. You let go of what is beautiful and unique. You pursue something new and don't even know that the wind of your own running is a thief."
— Sena Jeter Naslund (Ahab's Wife)

"Her eys were as green as the sea, and forever I forgave the sea for not appearing blue."
— Sena Jeter Naslund

""That night, though I was weary with the day, I took to the roof again.... My fingertips rested lightly on the wooden rail. I could not know if stars were equal to each other, but if they were, then the dim ones must be far and farther away, and toward those reaches I hurled my soul." "
— Sena Jeter Naslund (Ahab's Wife: Or, The Star-gazer: A Novel)

"Ahab was neither my first husband nor my last"
— Sena Jeter Naslund (Ahab's Wife: Or, The Star-gazer: A Novel)

"People are always composed of a combination of the real and the abstract . . . We make each other up."
— Sena Jeter Naslund (Ahab's Wife: Or, The Star-gazer: A Novel)

"Pardon me, dear human self, capable of the most heinous degradation, capable of soaring."
— Sena Jeter Naslund (Ahab's Wife: Or, The Star-gazer: A Novel)

""What was the golden motto embroidered on the hem of my baby's silk dress? We are kin to stars. I reach my hands toward them, spread my fingers and see those diamonds in the black V's between my fanning fingers. To think that I could gather them into my hands, stuff them in my pockets, is folly. But I can reach. It is I, myself, alive now, who reach into the night toward stars. Their light is on my hands. Their light is in my hands. I gasp in the crisp air of earth and know that I am made of what makes stars! Those atoms are burning bright--I lower my hands--why, they are here within me. I am as old as they and will continue as long as they, and after our demise, we will all be born again, eons from now. What atoms they have I cannot know. I cannot call their names, but they are not strangers to me. I know them in my being, and they know me. Little scrap, little morsel, the stars sing to me, we are the same."
"
— Sena Jeter Naslund

""Time is something of an enemy" she opined, "for us mortals. And yet I love it" - she fluttered her fingers in the air - "I love this moment, and it's a child of time.""
— Sena Jeter Naslund (Ahab's Wife: Or, The Star-gazer: A Novel)

"Is it not the case that many a life journey starts out in the opposite direction to its destiny?"
— Sena Jeter Naslund (Ahab's Wife: Or, The Star-gazer: A Novel)

"If you meet a woman of whatever complexion who sails her life with strength and grace and assurance, talk to her! And what you will find is that there has been a suffering, that at some time she has left herself for hanging dead."
— Sena Jeter Naslund

"(Describing a whale killed during Una's maiden voyage)...He was nearly twice the size of my sixty-barrel whale. Could the animal really be stowed below as small casks of oil? At your own death, I asked myself, can the vastness of your own experience be buried in the ground, funneled into nothing but the shape of a grave?"
— Sena Jeter Naslund