Out of the Deep Quotes

“Unless you were preternaturally busy and preoccupied, you simply couldn't live on and on in a haunted house without being occasionally reminded of its ghosts.”
― Walter de la Mare, Out of the Deep: And Other Supernatural Tales

“She's living on inside on what you're rotten without. That's what it is – a cannibal feast. She's a spider... she hates me; and you can scarcely dream what that hatred means. I used to think I had an inkling of the reason. It's oceans deeper than that. It just lies behind: herself against myself. Why, after all, how much do we really understand of anything? We don't even know our own histories, and not a tenth of the reasons. What has life been to me? – nothing but a trap.”
― Walter de la Mare, Out of the Deep

“There was a curious provocative reserve in that impassive melancholy face. It seemed to be haunted by some tragic influence of which she herself was unaware.”
― Walter de la Mare, Out of the Deep: And Other Supernatural Tales

“But who on earth had ever found the world the pleasanter and sweeter a place to bid good-bye to simply because it was obviously 'substantial', whatever that may mean? Simply because it did nothing you wanted it to do unless you paid for it pretty handsomely; or unless you accepted what it proffered with as open a hospitality as Jimmie had bestowed on his pilgrims of the night. Not that he much wanted – however pressing the invitation – to wander off out of his body into a better world, or, for that matter, into a worse.”
― Walter de la Mare, Out of the Deep

“He was not waiting for anything (except for the hour, maybe, when he would have to wait no more).”
― Walter de la Mare, Out of the Deep

“For we are but of yesterday and know nothing because our days upon earth are a shadow.”
― Walter de la Mare, Out of the Deep: And Other Supernatural Tales