Salt in the Wound Quotes

“You are terrified that your soul will be damned to hell. And I no longer have one left at all.”
― Sierra Simone, Salt in the Wound

“So he knows things. Things you think could help the bank.” “He knows things. He knows people.” I looked down at my hands. “And that knowledge is worth me. My future.” “Your future is Laurence Bank, Isolde, and united with Mark Trevena’s hoard of information…there is nothing the bank couldn’t do. No place we couldn’t reach, no person we couldn’t sway. We would be unstoppable.”
― Sierra Simone, Salt in the Wound

“So in a way, Mark has never left the field of intelligence,” my father continued. “And intelligence is a generous word for what he used to do, anyway—he was the devil they sent in to scourge the other devils. And he was the best in the world at it.”
― Sierra Simone, Salt in the Wound

“All of them have to pay in knowledge exclusive to their positions.”
― Sierra Simone, Salt in the Wound

“His club, Lyonesse, is different from its competitors in many ways, but the chief difference is this: he doesn’t accept payment in money, only in information. His patrons are politicians, diplomats, celebrities, royalty.”
― Sierra Simone, Salt in the Wound

“We have to think about the future differently. We have to think about this family differently, ensure our survival in more creative ways. Did Ms. Flores-King tell you what Mark Trevena used to do?” “You mean before the sex club?” My voice had a bite to it that I rarely allowed, but my father seemed to expect it. “Trevena was CIA. Special operations.”
― Sierra Simone, Salt in the Wound

“I will?” I asked, unable to modulate the wariness in my voice. “Yes,” my father said. “Because you are to marry him.”
― Sierra Simone, Salt in the Wound

“It was no accident that you met Mark Trevena last night. You will be seeing much more of him over the coming months—and years.”
― Sierra Simone, Salt in the Wound

“I couldn’t stop thinking about Mark Trevena, about his club in DC. About the way he’d looked at me.”
― Sierra Simone, Salt in the Wound

“I was realizing just then that I had a young person’s understanding of sex, that my notions of it were smooth and shallow and unshaded. A sex club. A fetish club.”
― Sierra Simone, Salt in the Wound

“I’d never even been kissed, but I hadn’t considered myself innocent, by any means.”
― Sierra Simone, Salt in the Wound

“Izzy, he runs a sex club.” I stumbled, barely catching myself before I fell. Of all the things she could have said, I would have never— Sex clubs were real? Truly real?”
― Sierra Simone, Salt in the Wound

“He said he was a business associate of my father’s.”
― Sierra Simone, Salt in the Wound

“I took significant pleasure in our dance, Isolde. Worry not.” And then he straightened, smoothed his jacket, and with a jagged sort of smile, left me. I felt the place where his hand had been on my back the rest of the night.”
― Sierra Simone, Salt in the Wound

“But then why did my chest feel so tight? Why did it feel like the air was falling, falling, right out of my lungs, as if it was suddenly made of something heavier than air, like iron or lead? Why was there was nothing left to keep my pulse moving normally?”
― Sierra Simone, Salt in the Wound

“something about dancing with him under the night sky felt like dancing right into a trap that even I might not be able to escape from.”
― Sierra Simone, Salt in the Wound

“This man, so much older than me, could outplay me, outmaneuver me. He could even kill me, if he chose—”
― Sierra Simone, Salt in the Wound

“Sometimes, both in sparring and in diplomacy, you had to stop dancing around your opponent and attack.”
― Sierra Simone, Salt in the Wound

“Isolde Laurence,” he said softly. “At last we meet for real.” “I’m sorry,” I said carefully. “I think you have the better of me, Mister…?” “Mark Trevena.”
― Sierra Simone, Salt in the Wound

“I felt someone approach. I knew to turn gradually, to give the appearance of slow reflexes and even slower perception—a trick Mortimer had taught me when I was a girl.”
― Sierra Simone, Salt in the Wound

“You cannot serve both God and money, we are told. And I didn’t intend to.”
― Sierra Simone, Salt in the Wound

“was playing two parts in my black silk gown tonight: the dutiful daughter on her father’s arm, looking lovely and gracious and expensive, and more invisibly, that of my uncle’s little mouse, gathering whatever crumbs I could find.”
― Sierra Simone, Salt in the Wound

“School was nothing but a concession for me, a necessary pretense until I could convince my father that my future lay with the Church and my uncle, and so it merited little of my attention.”
― Sierra Simone, Salt in the Wound

“At night, I dreamed of pain, of suffering, and when I woke up, I was unsettled and strange-feeling. I should not lust. I did not lust. And yet when I dreamed, I woke up panting and wet between the legs. It shamed me, because my craving for corporal penance was pure and good, I knew it, I knew it beyond a doubt when I was awake. But when I was asleep, my cravings for pain became dark and strange to me. As if my body were no longer under my control.”
― Sierra Simone, Salt in the Wound

“Isolde, you wish to be God’s hands here on Earth. That requires sacrifice. You cannot creep through rooms with a cinched thigh, you cannot listen for me unnoticed at your father’s galas and parties if everyone is noticing the flagellation marks on your shoulders. If you are to be God’s creature as I have molded you to be, your body must be whole and strong and unmarked.”
― Sierra Simone, Salt in the Wound

“The gift God is giving you now,” my uncle suggested softly, “is one of deprivation. You must offer up that lack, that yearning, to him. You must live without this thing you crave to better serve him. There is no more valuable suffering or penance than that.”
― Sierra Simone, Salt in the Wound

“His voice was deep and rough and cold. Ice wouldn’t melt in that voice. But it was mannerly, polite. Some devils hide, you see. Right in plain sight.”
― Sierra Simone, Salt in the Wound

“What is it about being watched that makes us want to impress the watcher?”
― Sierra Simone, Salt in the Wound

“Iwas seventeen when I met the devil.”
― Sierra Simone, Salt in the Wound

“He wouldn't get my shame from me as well as my weakness. At the very least, I'd keep that one thing for myself.”
― Sierra Simone, Salt in the Wound