The Hundred-Year Flood Quotes

“Sometimes our passion is so strong that it makes a fool of us.”
― Matthew Salesses, The Hundred-Year Flood

“Hell or high water, Cupid marches on. In which war, he didn’t say.”
― Matthew Salesses, The Hundred-Year Flood

“Prague might be the perfect place, after all: a city that valued anonymity, the desire to be no one and someone at once.”
― Matthew Salesses, The Hundred-Year Flood

“A desperate longing stopped her breath, as if he’d jumped already, leaving her behind. “Please,” he said. She took his hand and stepped beside him. She should have run away with him as soon as she could. Maybe every act of faith, as they got older, was meant to make up for an earlier lack of faith.”
― Matthew Salesses, The Hundred-Year Flood

“The next day, Tee climbed over the railing in Vyšehrad and sat on the cliff above the Vltava. Sailboats struggled to tack against the wind. Back in the ruins, a little boy knelt in the prayer maze, eyes closed. When the boy left, Tee walked into the center. He found a tiny blue thimble, just big enough to catch a drop of rain.”
― Matthew Salesses, The Hundred-Year Flood

“Stop doubling the past with the present. They’re two things in a line, not two versions of something else.”
― Matthew Salesses, The Hundred-Year Flood

“She was one of her kind, the most American she would ever be, the last American left in this hundred-year flood.”
― Matthew Salesses, The Hundred-Year Flood

“Maybe every act of faith, as they got older, was meant to make up for an earlier act of faith.”
― Matthew Salesses, The Hundred-Year Flood

“Tell me a legend,” he said out of nowhere, and he realised they were making stories of each other, or themselves.”
― Matthew Salesses, The Hundred-Year Flood

“How strange the way we wade into disaster, step after step, not realizing how far we've gone until we're drowning.”
― Matthew Salesses, The Hundred-Year Flood

“Isn't memory a trespasser to the heart?”
― Matthew Salesses, The Hundred-Year Flood

“A man on the tram leaned in and asked if she was okay, and she wiped her eyes and said, “And what would you do if I am not?” He turned away.”
― Matthew Salesses, The Hundred-Year Flood

“The problem was, there had always been something itching inside him, fluttering like a bird in his throat, waiting to fly out.”
― Matthew Salesses, The Hundred-Year Flood

“What was it like?” he demanded, “the Revolution?” He imagined falling in love over art, brushstrokes inciting a nation to freedom, Pavel’s paintings hanging on the facade of the museum in Wenceslas Square, an idealist burning himself beneath. Pavel sighed and traded brush for cigarette. “It was like something, history, could never being stopped.”
― Matthew Salesses, The Hundred-Year Flood

“He had heard once that a caterpillar had to die in order to become a butterfly. A butterfly was an entirely new life.”
― Matthew Salesses, The Hundred-Year Flood