Ahab's Wife, or The Star-Gazer Quotes

“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

“Great minds may have cold hearts. Form but no color. It is an incompleteness. And so they are afraid of any woman who both thinks and feels deeply.”
― Sena Jeter Naslund, Ahab's Wife, or The Star-Gazer

“Where we choose to be, where we choose to be--we have the power to determine that in our lives. We cannot reel time backward or forward, but we can take ourselves to the place that defines our being.”
― Sena Jeter Naslund, Ahab's Wife, or The Star-Gazer

“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 : Or the Star Gazer

“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

“Pardon me, dear human self, capable of the most heinous degradation, capable of soaring.”
― Sena Jeter Naslund, Ahab's Wife, or The Star-Gazer

“Her eyes were as green as the sea, and forever I forgave the sea for not appearing blue.”
― Sena Jeter Naslund, Ahab's Wife, or The Star-Gazer

“I turned from my window. Suddenly it seemed odd for my neighbors on both sides to have visitors while I had none. For the first time, I felt lonely at 'Sconset.
"Let's cook," Frannie said energetically. "We will smell so good that they'll all come running." She picked up a bowl, filled it with apples from the barrel, and immediately began to cut them up. I put water to boil, got out cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg, lard, flour, sugar, salt, saleratus, vinegar, and all the other things for apple pies. We both laughed happily. How easy it is, we thought, to make a decision, to implement a remedy, to act.”
― Sena Jeter Naslund, Ahab's Wife, or The Star-Gazer

“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

“Do you think yourself a string too short to save? Do you think that you are lank and straight, a linear bit with no connection fore or aft? Fear not your insignificance. Nature has a drawer for you. Yes, nature garners all the string too short to save, and mice visit that drawer. Here’s nesting material! Yes, you will be interwoven, be it now or later.”
― Sena Jeter Naslund, Ahab's Wife, or The Star-Gazer

“Of our pasts we seemed to know all we needed to know. Nothing was concealed, and though nothing was overtly revealed, all was known. In guilt and in forgiveness we counted ourselves equals, and always had. The sun himself envied us.”
― Sena Jeter Naslund, Ahab's Wife, or The Star-Gazer

“Phoebe asked me, "Tell me, what do you think of the afterlife?"
I was a bit nonplussed. I had no idea what she thought, but I knew that the question must be of greater interest to someone of her age than to me. But our conversation had been completely honest, and before I could speak, honesty and tact had joined hands in my answer. "I have no faith at all," I said, "but sometimes I have hope."
I rather think," she replied, "that total annihilation is the most comfortable position."
I was shaken. The horse clopped on. The children laughed behind us.
When I die," she said, "I don't expect to see any of my loved ones again. I'll just become a part of all this." She waved her hand at the surrounding countryside. "That's all right with me.”
― Sena Jeter Naslund, Ahab's Wife, or The Star-Gazer

“What, in nature," Kit asked, "is the most beautiful thing you've seen? Or the most terrible?"
"The Dismals," Giles answered promptly. "A beautiful aberration in the lay of the land--North Alabama. A section mysteriously lowered, strewn with boulders, ferny, mossy, cooler--the vegetation, they say, typical of Canada. There the creek runs clear, but all other Alabama rivers and waterways are muddy with sediment. I even like the name--the Dismals. An eternal place, disjunct with the climate, the time, and its location."
"You think being dismal is an attractive association with eternity?" I asked.
"It is a cool Eden in the Southern summer heat. What's yours, Una?"
"The Kentucky hills in spring. Layers of pink and white--redbud and dogwood."
"And you?" Giles asked Kit.
"Stars," he said. That was all.”
― Sena Jeter Naslund, Ahab's Wife, or The Star-Gazer

“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

“Ahab was neither my first husband nor my last”
― Sena Jeter Naslund, Ahab's Wife, or The Star-Gazer

“She sat still, I thought, and yet she traveled. And when one stitches, the mind travels, not the way men do, with ax and oxen through the wilderness, but surely our traveling counted too, as motion. And I thought of the patience of the stitches. Writing a book, I thought, which men often do, but women only rarely, has the posture of sewing. One hand leads, and the other hand helps. And books, like quilts, are made, one word at a time, one stitch at a time.”
― Sena Jeter Naslund, Ahab's Wife, or The Star-Gazer

“You are my Easter.”
― Sena Jeter Naslund, Ahab's Wife, or The Star-Gazer

“Is beauty enhanced or adulterated by utility?
”
― Sena Jeter Naslund, Ahab's Wife, or The Star-Gazer

“S IS THE SOUND of the sea. Her surge and suck, her spray and surf. Sometimes she seethes. She knows the sound of smooth. With her s, the sea marries the shore, and then there is scamper and slush in the sand. With curling s’s the sea rises to stroke the side of her superior, the sky, who loves and meets her in the s of spray, spawned in liquid and air.”
― Sena Jeter Naslund, Ahab's Wife, or The Star-Gazer

“He prayeth best who loveth best all things both great and small.”
― Sena Jeter Naslund, Ahab's Wife, or The Star-Gazer

“Honesty, like any inclination, can become a ruling passion, a monomania almost.”
― Sena Jeter Naslund, Ahab's Wife, or The Star-Gazer

“and this contentment as well? Where we choose to be, where we choose to be—we have that power to determine our lives. We cannot reel time backward or forward, but we can take ourselves to the place that defines our being.”
― Sena Jeter Naslund, Ahab's Wife, or The Star-Gazer

“Beware the treachery of words... Words seem to be well-woven baskets ready to hold your meaning, but they betray you with rotted corners and splintered stays.”
― Sena Jeter Naslund, Ahab's Wife, or The Star-Gazer

“It was in her nature to love and to nurture; she would not leave those feelings within herself to fester and sour, but instead she chose someone who would receive her gifts gladly. She did not hold herself to be so special that only one special person could she find satisfactory.”
― Sena Jeter Naslund, Ahab's Wife, or The Star-Gazer

“I spiraled slowly down the steps, the soft way a milkweed seed sometimes twirls to earth. I wanted time for any vague thought to come to mind that mind should want. No new ones came, but the pace seemed a meditative winding, and what I was winding was like yarn on an oblong skein, softly enfolding a quiet center that was myself.”
― Sena Jeter Naslund, Ahab's Wife, or The Star-Gazer

“Yet intact Ahab, back from his first voyage, once said of just such a changeable breeze, This contrast is the way of life itself. All playfully, he added, But were I God, then would every day be invariantly good. Then he asked me if he might be the god of my world.”
― Sena Jeter Naslund, Ahab's Wife, or The Star-Gazer

“Where we choose to be, where we choose to be—we have that power to determine our lives. We cannot reel time backward or forward, but we can take ourselves to the place that defines our being.”
― Sena Jeter Naslund, Ahab's Wife, or The Star-Gazer

“As a girl rebelling against my father’s dogma, I had scoffed at Job for accepting God’s consolation of a new wife and new children. But I, most Joblike, when Giles was dead, embraced Kit, and when Kit conveyed that he was not coming back, it was the messenger himself, Ahab, whom I immediately loved. If Mother and Liberty were gone, then here was Susan to unburden me of love. Not to be loved but to love lightened my load of grief and gave value and direction to my life.”
― Sena Jeter Naslund, Ahab's Wife, or The Star-Gazer

“I told her that I was a University of One, Una University, and that all day she should listen to me talk.... But when I began to expatiate, it amazed me how little I knew, and that, really, it did not require the day, but only the morning to get through it all.”
― Sena Jeter Naslund, Ahab's Wife, or The Star-Gazer

“She was not spouting, but sewing the water with her body,”
― Sena Jeter Naslund, Ahab's Wife, or The Star-Gazer