The Boarding-House Quotes

“She is embarrassed to be alive and no one on earth can fully console her.”
― William Trevor, The Boarding-House

“Would he ever, he wondered, escape from people who banged on the doors he locked to demand his egress?”
― William Trevor, The Boarding-House

“He was new to London in those days, and he had not liked it. He had not cared for the intensity of the traffic, or the underground trains that were full of a human smell and of people who lit up tipped cigarettes and pushed with their elbows.”
― William Trevor, The Boarding-House

“When Mr Bird had written his will and had read it over he became aware that he was laughing. He heard the sound for some time, a minute or a minute and a quarter, and then he recognized its source and wondered why he was laughing like that, such a quiet, slurping sound, like the lapping of water.”
― William Trevor, The Boarding-House

“Studdy was thinking that the creature was an animal; he was saying to himself that it was surely in error that she had become a member of the human race.”
― William Trevor, The Boarding-House

“She thought of death and of her own in particular: the death of her body and the death of her face.”
― William Trevor, The Boarding-House

“Major Eele observed Studdy clumsily thinking. He saw an opportunity to create a pleasant mischief and did so immediately.”
― William Trevor, The Boarding-House

“Miss Clerricot blushes most charmingly and raises a hand to cover a portion of her countenance. It is a shame, this ill-feeling that exists between Miss Clerricot and her face.”
― William Trevor, The Boarding-House

“Concealed from the public eye, snug within his coffin, Mr Bird looked as he had looked in life. Despite his size and the flowing bulk of his flesh, he had borne always, since a child, the grey pallor of death; and he had a way of seeming as still as a statue.”
― William Trevor, The Boarding-House