The Fortune's Rocks Quartet Quotes

“There is a moment, recognizable to each of them, when she might linger and change everything entirely. But she lets herself out of the car. She doesn’t look back as she walks toward the hotel door.”
― Anita Shreve, The Fortune's Rocks Quartet: Fortune's Rocks, Sea Glass, The Pilot's Wife, Body Surfing

“When she thinks about entering into a relationship with such a man, however, she feels only fear—a fear similar to, yet not as intense as, the fear of living her life alone.”
― Anita Shreve, The Fortune's Rocks Quartet: Fortune's Rocks, Sea Glass, The Pilot's Wife, Body Surfing

“I think some part of her was afraid of me,” he says, “afraid that I would want to live in Naples.” “Would you have done that?” she asks. “Not if she didn’t want to. I don’t think she ever understood the power she had over me.” “Does she still? Have that power?” “Oh, yes,” he answers, smiling.”
― Anita Shreve, The Fortune's Rocks Quartet: Fortune's Rocks, Sea Glass, The Pilot's Wife, Body Surfing

“I’m not sure I’ve ever met a man capable of going weeks without once mentioning his profession.” “You could know my father two years and he wouldn’t tell you if you didn’t ask.” “Unusual these days, when a man is often measured by what he does, by how successful he is.”
― Anita Shreve, The Fortune's Rocks Quartet: Fortune's Rocks, Sea Glass, The Pilot's Wife, Body Surfing

“I did like the idea that my life was based on asking questions. And finding answers to those questions. I suppose I believe that being wise is more important in the long run than having a lot of money.” Sydney laughs. “Which is good because I’m never going to have any.”
― Anita Shreve, The Fortune's Rocks Quartet: Fortune's Rocks, Sea Glass, The Pilot's Wife, Body Surfing

“She’ll find a man,” Jeff announces. “She’ll be all right.” Sydney is taken aback. Though, possibly, in Julie’s case, an independent life is not a reasonable expectation. “I think the man will find her,” Sydney corrects.”
― Anita Shreve, The Fortune's Rocks Quartet: Fortune's Rocks, Sea Glass, The Pilot's Wife, Body Surfing

“Take a flashlight,” Mr. Edwards says. Ben holds aloft a Maglite heavy enough to kill a man.”
― Anita Shreve, The Fortune's Rocks Quartet: Fortune's Rocks, Sea Glass, The Pilot's Wife, Body Surfing

“It will be your generation who will suffer,” the older man says, his anger apparently not having been forgotten after all. “You’ll be decades extricating yourself from this mess. Monstrous debt. Terrorists. Abysmal foreign policy.” The table ponders the future, which does indeed look grim.”
― Anita Shreve, The Fortune's Rocks Quartet: Fortune's Rocks, Sea Glass, The Pilot's Wife, Body Surfing

“He’ll ruin us all,” Mr. Edwards says with feeling. From prior conversations, Sydney knows he is referring to the president of the United States.”
― Anita Shreve, The Fortune's Rocks Quartet: Fortune's Rocks, Sea Glass, The Pilot's Wife, Body Surfing

“Are you Jewish?” she asked as she was showing Sydney to her room. It wasn’t clear to Sydney which answer Mrs. Edwards would have preferred: Jewish being more interesting; not Jewish being more acceptable.”
― Anita Shreve, The Fortune's Rocks Quartet: Fortune's Rocks, Sea Glass, The Pilot's Wife, Body Surfing

“She wondered as she drove why she had never imagined an affair. How could a woman live with a man all that time and never suspect? It seemed, at the very least, a monumental act of naïveté, of oblivion. But then she thought she knew the answer even as she asked the question: A dedicated adulterer causes no suspicion, she realized, because he truly does not want to be caught.”
― Anita Shreve, The Fortune's Rocks Quartet: Fortune's Rocks, Sea Glass, The Pilot's Wife, Body Surfing

“How quickly the mind accommodated itself, she thought, even in such tiny increments. Perhaps it was that after a series of shocks, the body acclimated itself, like being inoculated — each subsequent shock delivering less impact. Or possibly this momentarily benumbed state was only a lull — a cease-fire. How would she know? There had never been a rehearsal for any of this.”
― Anita Shreve, The Fortune's Rocks Quartet: Fortune's Rocks, Sea Glass, The Pilot's Wife, Body Surfing

“No, Honora is the more alluring of the two. And if he hadn’t been so drunk these last two nights, he might have done something about it.”
― Anita Shreve, The Fortune's Rocks Quartet: Fortune's Rocks, Sea Glass, The Pilot's Wife, Body Surfing

“He put his hand under her skirt, and it would not have mattered to anyone except McDermott and herself. She digs her toes deep into the wet sand as she walks. She said to McDermott, I wish.”
― Anita Shreve, The Fortune's Rocks Quartet: Fortune's Rocks, Sea Glass, The Pilot's Wife, Body Surfing

“He thinks about what happened earlier on the wet grass. The way her skin felt under his hand. In his mind, he goes over the kisses again. Were there two or three? The sound she made at the back of her throat. He knows he will remember the precise sound of that moan all his life, that he will have to listen to it again and again — a record on a turntable.”
― Anita Shreve, The Fortune's Rocks Quartet: Fortune's Rocks, Sea Glass, The Pilot's Wife, Body Surfing

“she was alone in her house, and all she could do was wander from room to room, looking out the windows and replaying the few moments at the roadhouse and at the kitchen table over and over and over until she had extracted from them every possible nugget of meaning. At the time, it seemed to take place before her mind could comprehend what was happening, though it was clear her body knew immediately, and she thinks it is astonishing the way the body can respond all on its own, without the mind quite keeping up.”
― Anita Shreve, The Fortune's Rocks Quartet: Fortune's Rocks, Sea Glass, The Pilot's Wife, Body Surfing

“A feeling of panic rises within her. “Last night,” he says, “on the grass, I wanted to make love to you. I wanted it so bad I thought I would do almost anything to make it happen.” She closes her eyes. She releases a hand, and he seizes it. “You were afraid,” he says. She shakes her head no. “Yes,” she says. He kisses the inside of her wrist. “I think that’s it,” he says.”
― Anita Shreve, The Fortune's Rocks Quartet: Fortune's Rocks, Sea Glass, The Pilot's Wife, Body Surfing

“Beside her, Sexton sleeps in his guileless pose, his arms thrown up behind his head, looking exposed and vulnerable and content, and for a moment Honora has a dreamy and irrational desire to lay something heavy on his throat and crush his windpipe.”
― Anita Shreve, The Fortune's Rocks Quartet: Fortune's Rocks, Sea Glass, The Pilot's Wife, Body Surfing

“The mustache bother you?” Tsomides asks from his end of the table. “We Greeks like our women with mustaches.”
― Anita Shreve, The Fortune's Rocks Quartet: Fortune's Rocks, Sea Glass, The Pilot's Wife, Body Surfing

“Hell, no,” he says. “A good Irish Catholic like me? No, I’m loyal to the union, not the Reds.”
― Anita Shreve, The Fortune's Rocks Quartet: Fortune's Rocks, Sea Glass, The Pilot's Wife, Body Surfing

“He’s adorable. A saint, really. I’ve no experience with selfless men. They’re remarkably unsexy, don’t you think?”
― Anita Shreve, The Fortune's Rocks Quartet: Fortune's Rocks, Sea Glass, The Pilot's Wife, Body Surfing

“Of course, he is a handsome man, but there is something a bit . . . well . . . oily about him that is somewhat off-putting, at least to Vivian. He seems too eager to please, yet hardly to notice when Honora is in the room.”
― Anita Shreve, The Fortune's Rocks Quartet: Fortune's Rocks, Sea Glass, The Pilot's Wife, Body Surfing

“The tension in the room reminds Honora of the aftermath of a thunderclap: full of sound and yet intensely silent.”
― Anita Shreve, The Fortune's Rocks Quartet: Fortune's Rocks, Sea Glass, The Pilot's Wife, Body Surfing

“And then said capitalist decides for whatever reason,” Vivian continues, “— perhaps his business is not doing well, perhaps he wants a trip to Havana — to cut his workers’ pay ten percent so as to increase profits for himself. And, mirabile dictu, the workers mind!” Mironson says nothing, but Honora can see a small twitch at the side of his mouth. “Uppity workers,” Vivian says, exhaling a long plume of blue smoke.”
― Anita Shreve, The Fortune's Rocks Quartet: Fortune's Rocks, Sea Glass, The Pilot's Wife, Body Surfing

“Let’s see if I’ve got this right. Capitalist owns textile company and makes huge amount of money and lives across the river in big house with Frigidaire and GE washing machine and Packard and Chris-Craft motor yacht while employing hundreds of workers to whom he pays pitiful wages, all the while thinking it perfectly normal that they should live in hideously filthy tenements with no running water and no indoor plumbing and not enough money to feed their children. How am I doing so far?”
― Anita Shreve, The Fortune's Rocks Quartet: Fortune's Rocks, Sea Glass, The Pilot's Wife, Body Surfing

“She had violent red hair and the clearest skin he has ever seen.”
― Anita Shreve, The Fortune's Rocks Quartet: Fortune's Rocks, Sea Glass, The Pilot's Wife, Body Surfing

“Management has pared wages down to next to nothing, McDermott reads, and he thinks of fingernails scraping a cement wall as they go down. The bosses live in high style on the other side of the river. McDermott can see the massive houses from the mill yard — poor planning on someone’s part, he thinks. No hint of an economic depression over there. Not with all their power lawn mowers and swimming pools and fancy automobiles. In fact, it’s possible the bosses are doing better than ever now. Money goes farther these days: gardeners and cooks and chauffeurs come dirt cheap.”
― Anita Shreve, The Fortune's Rocks Quartet: Fortune's Rocks, Sea Glass, The Pilot's Wife, Body Surfing

“(Are you squiffy?”
― Anita Shreve, The Fortune's Rocks Quartet: Fortune's Rocks, Sea Glass, The Pilot's Wife, Body Surfing