The Reef Quotes

“There was such love as she had dreamed, and she meant to go on believing in it and cherishing the thought that she was worthy of it.”
― Edith Wharton, The Reef

“I want our life to be like a house with all the windows lit.”
― Edith Wharton, The Reef

“Life's just a perpetual piecing together of broken bits.”
― Edith Wharton, The Reef

“Love, she told herself, would one day release her from this spell of unreality. She was persuaded that the sublime passion was the key to the enigma; but it was difficult to relate her conception of love to the forms it wore in her experience. Two or three of the girls she had envied for their superior acquaintance with the arts of life had contracted, in the course of time, what were variously described as "romantic" or "foolish" marriages; one even made a runaway match, and languished for a while under a cloud of social reprobation. Here, then, was passion in action, romance converted to reality; yet the heroines of these exploits returned from them untransfigured, and their husbands were as dull as ever when one had to sit next to them at dinner. Her own case, of course, would be different.”
― Edith Wharton, The Reef

“Darrow, lighting a cigarette while she sucked her straw, knew the primitive complacency of the man at whose companion other men stare.”
― Edith Wharton, The Reef

“Anna lifted her happy smile. The impulse to press his lips to it made him come close and draw her upward. She threw her head back, as if surprised at the abruptness of the gesture; then her face leaned to his with the slow droop of a flower.”
― Edith Wharton, The Reef