The Gilded Hour Quotes

“There was nothing predictable in this life, and very little that was fair.”
― Sara Donati, The Gilded Hour

“If this went on much longer, Mary Augustin told herself, her brain would be riddled with question marks, hundreds of little hooks set so deep they’d never let go.”
― Sara Donati, The Gilded Hour

“But what she wanted to do was slip between cool sheets and fall asleep in a breeze from an open window. She wanted to sleep for days on end, and to wake up when the whole sorry business of the inquest and the missing boys had been resolved. She wanted sleep in order to put Mrs. Stone’s testimony out of her head, and at the same time she wanted to bind all those words together into a club and hit every man in the room over the head with it. Because they hadn’t really understood the story behind the story, and what Mrs. Stone was trying to tell them about Janine Campbell’s life. Mrs. Stone had called herself plain-speaking and blunt, but she had wrapped every observation in the language of well-brought-up women, with the result that none of the men had any real sense of the anger and frustration that drove Janine Campbell.”
― Sara Donati, The Gilded Hour

“Some women had that strength hidden inside them, a light that flared to life when everyone else was overwhelmed.”
― Sara Donati, The Gilded Hour

“Give children a clock to live by,” Mrs. Lee said. “So they know what’s coming, when it’s coming, how long it will last. They’ll take comfort in that knowing.”
― Sara Donati, The Gilded Hour

“Young people today (finally, I’m old enough to use that cliché) seem to have no real conception of how bad things were for women and, more important, could be again.”
― Sara Donati, The Gilded Hour

“When will you stop thinking of yourself as a burden?”
― Sara Donati, The Gilded Hour

“No, I’m saying that you have got to look and think symptom, not disease. If she’s a symptom, then ask, where is the disease?”
― Sara Donati, The Gilded Hour

“No one ever does anything our of charity," Anna went on. "Every choice we make benefits ourselves directly or indirectly. Even if it looks like a sacrifice, the alternative would be unbearable in some way. If I hadn't helped I wouldn't sleep well , and I need my sleep.”
― Sara Donati, The Gilded Hour

“I’m not married.” “You got to find a man with character enough to take pride in an educated wife,” Althea said. “That’s what Mama always told me.” She looked at her mother and grinned. “And that’s what I did.”
― Sara Donati, The Gilded Hour

“Young as she is, the stuff
Of her life is a great cargo, and some of it heavy:
I wish her a lucky passage.”
― Sara Donati, The Gilded Hour

“Women who did not adhere to the ideals of the time, whose interests and behaviors were considered abnormal and unnatural, were sometimes committed to hospitals and asylums, and in extreme cases they were subjected to castration and female circumcision.”
― Sara Donati, The Gilded Hour

“He was still assuming the guilty party was a man, which was likely, after all. Women killed with poison; men made a science of inflicting pain.”
― Sara Donati, The Gilded Hour

“Contrary to what Comstock and the physicians on the jury seemed to believe, women in distress could find a way to end an unwanted pregnancy, so long as they could pay for it. For every case that came to public view because something went terribly wrong, there were a hundred or more that remained a private matter.”
― Sara Donati, The Gilded Hour

“Malthusians believe that overpopulation will cause economic disaster and the end of civilized society. They put the blame for overpopulation—for everything, really—on the immigrant poor. It’s xenophobia disguised as economic theory.”
― Sara Donati, The Gilded Hour

“Oh, yes,” Anna said. “I would like to know what measures you advocate.” He stood a little straighter. “The first problem is the influx of the worst of Europe. The moral and intellectual dregs must be turned away. If such a policy had been put in place at the right time, Michael and Dylan Joyce would have been born in Ireland, and feeding them would not fall to us.”
― Sara Donati, The Gilded Hour

“Contraception is illegal and so is abortion. History makes it clear that human beings are not capable of abstinence. The poor—wait, what did you call them? The underclasses. How do you suggest their numbers be kept to levels you find acceptable?”
― Sara Donati, The Gilded Hour

“Generally people believed that an abandoned child was illegitimate and that the mother had put it away from her to hide an inexcusable moral”
― Sara Donati, The Gilded Hour

“As you are aware,” he went on, “police officers do not always see through the elaborate screens set up by these medical practitioners who are so contemptuous of the laws of God and man. But I believe that detectives are equal to this challenge and I would like all of you to volunteer to serve as agents of the Society for the Suppression”
― Sara Donati, The Gilded Hour

“Caught in the gloaming, suspended in the gilded hour, she saw herself in a landscape of years stretching into a horizon she had never dared imagine for herself.”
― Sara Donati, The Gilded Hour

“And I knew it was her, the one I thought I’d never find. A strong woman, a smart, beautiful, uncompromising woman, and sure of her place in the world.”
― Sara Donati, The Gilded Hour

“But a true friendship between women is the strongest bond of all.”
― Sara Donati, The Gilded Hour

“In the end few people are strong enough to reject what society expects of them.”
― Sara Donati, The Gilded Hour

“Don’t go looking for trouble, it will find you soon enough without you shouting out an invitation.”
― Sara Donati, The Gilded Hour

“She wasn’t healing, that was the wrong word. She was coming to terms with loss.”
― Sara Donati, The Gilded Hour

“In the quiet Rosa came forward and put an arm around her sister. They looked so much alike, and were so different in the way they saw the world. She wondered if Rosa might have been a child more like her sister if circumstance hadn’t demanded the impossible of her.”
― Sara Donati, The Gilded Hour

“Children survived, if they had half a chance. Children who could form attachments survived best.”
― Sara Donati, The Gilded Hour

“And how was a person to deal with such generosity? To start with, she could appreciate the beautiful things around her.”
― Sara Donati, The Gilded Hour

“Sometimes I’ll regret the things I gave up,” Elise said. “But isn’t that always the way? Everyone makes choices and most people doubt themselves at one time or another.”
― Sara Donati, The Gilded Hour

“She would miss him for the rest of her life.”
― Sara Donati, The Gilded Hour