Waiting for the Flood Quotes

“This is the story of my life: standing on the edges of things and worrying, when I'm supposed to just walk through them.”
― Alexis Hall, Waiting for the Flood

“You don't really fall in love with a house. You fall in love with the life you could have in it.”
― Alexis Hall, Waiting for the Flood

“I have a sort of . . . thing, I suppose, for certain words. They spark inside me, somehow, turning me to touchpaper, but I don't know what they are until someone says them.”
― Alexis Hall, Waiting for the Flood

“Life is so full of rough edges - small tasks and expectations that scratch you bloody and remind you that you're naked and alone.”
― Alexis Hall, Waiting for the Flood

“I knew how to be a friend, a lover, a partner. I knew how to make someone feel cherished and seen and listened to -- everything I had myself always so desperately wanted and been afraid I might never have because I was so used to being overlooked.”
― Alexis Hall, Waiting for the Flood

“I knew it was nothing more than the vaguest sense of connection, the kite-string tug of an intriguing stranger. But I simply wasn't ready to feel these things again.
To gather up the dust of my heart and scatter it again on the winds of hope.”
― Alexis Hall, Waiting for the Flood

“In daylight and up close, he was merciless, all smiles and freckles, the brightest, boldest flame a moth could wish for.”
― Alexis Hall, Waiting for the Flood

“I'm not trying to upset you. I just think it's about time you moved on."

"I have moved on."

"Have you? Because it looks a lot like standing around to me.”
― Alexis Hall, Waiting for the Flood

“It's something I imagine occasionally: waking up to discover civilisation has ended, leaving nothing but empty streets and silence. I don't actually want that to happen, but I ponder what I'd do, and how I'd stay alive. How it would feel to be really alone, and for my loneliness to be written on the landscape rather than merely upon me.”
― Alexis Hall, Waiting for the Flood

“Are we going somewhere?” “To the river.” “But why?” “To see what we can see.” “I really d-don’t think . . .” We were going to end up as newspaper headlines: Pensioner and Homosexual Found Dead in River—Coincidence, Tragedy, or Satanic Ritual Gone Wrong?”
― Alexis Hall, Waiting for the Flood

“I'm not saying you should marry wossisname. Just give yourself a chance with him."

"A chance to what?"

"Be with someone again."

"I w-w-want to," I whispered. "But what if it goes the same way? W-what if I'm unbeable with?”
― Alexis Hall, Waiting for the Flood

“I put my head in my hands. "Oh, I don't know anymore. I don't know where love ends and habit begins."

"Who does?”
― Alexis Hall, Waiting for the Flood

“I thought crocodiles lived under my bed and if my feet hung over the side, they'd get bitten off. So I slept in a ball. I think I still do actually." Oh God. Shut up. Shut up. "Out of habit, I mean, not crocodiles. I d-don't think that anymore. Obviously."

He was quiet a moment. And then, faintly accusingly, "You know that's adorable, don't you?"

I tripped hard over adorable and couldn't think how to answer. So I said nothing at all, and merely enjoyed my few minutes in a dangerous puddle with a man who maybe thought I was adorable.”
― Alexis Hall, Waiting for the Flood

“Tonight there was something different. Something both deeper and shallower than friendship. Familiarity, perhaps, the sudden realisation that we lived our sealed-up little lives in closeness to each other. That we had something to share and something to lose. Something to protect together.”
― Alexis Hall, Waiting for the Flood

“It’s all I’ve ever wanted, really. Someone to make tea for. To know how they like to drink it, and share some pieces of time with them at the end of long days, and short ones, good days and bad, and everything in between.”
― Alexis Hall, Waiting for the Flood

“He glanced at me, smiling now. “Hot and kind and slightly mysterious. How did I get so lucky?” “Is that how you see me?” “Everyone’s mysterious before you know them.” “But w-when you know me, I won’t be mysterious anymore.” “Yeah, you’ll be you, and that’ll be better.”
― Alexis Hall, Waiting for the Flood

“It was nothing more than the instinct of sociability, but it made me realise how long it had been since I’d been smiled at by a stranger. How long since I’d had someone to smile back to.”
― Alexis Hall, Waiting for the Flood

“I don't need you to take care of me."

"No, you need a kick up the arse.”
― Alexis Hall, Waiting for the Flood

“We were going to end up as newspaper headlines: Pensioner and Homosexual Found Dead in River - Coincidence, Tragedy, or Satanic Ritual Gone Wrong?”
― Alexis Hall, Waiting for the Flood

“Not at all. You just have to teach people to value someone else’s access to spoons as much as they value their own.”

I tried not to stare at him. How did someone like this just . . . happen? Random act of atoms? Or was there a god somewhere who, thirty years or so ago, had woken up one morning and thought, What the universe needs right now is someone to think deeply about teaspoons.”
― Alexis Hall, Waiting for the Flood

“No one could have called him handsome, and the orange waders probably didn't help - but when he smiled? Suddenly handsome didn't seem important anymore - only the things happiness could do to a man's face.”
― Alexis Hall, Waiting for the Flood

“It's d-d-dishonourable to peek at someone else's cards."

"Cribbage is cutthroat.”
― Alexis Hall, Waiting for the Flood

“I never interrupt people when they're speaking because I know only too well how annoying it is. But with my every brattish interjection, the dimples deepened at the corner of his lips. And I was half-drunk on his smiling and the power of saying things that made him smile.”
― Alexis Hall, Waiting for the Flood

“He grinned, teeth and dimples and freckles moving like dust in a ray of sunlight. "Ayup, petal."

Oh”
― Alexis Hall, Waiting for the Flood

“People don't want to hurt each other; it's just sometimes they forget.”
― Alexis Hall, Waiting for the Flood

“Valuables, my arse,” she grumbled. “I’m eighty-two, I don’t have any valuables. I’ve just got a lifetime’s worth of crap.”
― Alexis Hall, Waiting for the Flood

“To gather up the dust of my heart and scatter it again on the winds of hope.”
― Alexis Hall, Waiting for the Flood

“I thought of Marius. Wild, wonderful, Byronic-fantasy Marius, who had somehow found something he wanted in the everyday quietness of me. Until he hadn't.”
― Alexis Hall, Waiting for the Flood

“His attention. Sweet and intense at the same time. Like a barley sugar I could untwist from its plastic and hold in my mouth. A flood of secret pleasure.”
― Alexis Hall, Waiting for the Flood

“I needed him to stop looking at me like that. It was casual. The way he'd ook at anyone, I was sure. But it made me feel so very there.”
― Alexis Hall, Waiting for the Flood