The Death of Mrs. Westaway Quotes

“Some situations have no simple resolution; all we can do is steer the course that causes the least harm.”
― Ruth Ware, The Death of Mrs. Westaway

“Time healed, they said, but it wasn’t true, or not completely. The first raw wound of loss had closed and silvered over, yes, but the scar it had left would never heal. It would always be there, aching and tender.”
― Ruth Ware, The Death of Mrs. Westaway

“You can’t influence fate, or change what’s out of your control. But you can choose what you yourself do with the cards you’re dealt.”
― Ruth Ware, The Death of Mrs. Westaway

“The cards do not predict the future. All thy can do is show us how a given situation may turn out, based on the energies we bring to the reading. Another day, another mood, a different set of energies, and the same question could have a completely different answer....We have free will. The answer the cards give can turn us in our path.”
― Ruth Ware, The Death of Mrs. Westaway

“One for sorrow Two for joy Three for a girl Four for a boy Five for silver Six for gold Seven for a secret Never to be told”
― Ruth Ware, The Death of Mrs. Westaway

“Never believe it, Hal. Never believe your own lies.

Because superstition was a trap – that was what she had learned, in the years of plying her trade on the pier. Touching wood, crossing fingers, counting magpies – they were all lies, all of them. False promises designed to give the illusion of control and meaning in a world in which the only destiny came from yourself. You can't predict the future, Hal knew.”
― Ruth Ware, The Death of Mrs. Westaway

“The people who came to her booth were seeking meaning and control – but they were looking in the wrong place. When they gave themselves over to superstition, they were giving up on shaping their own destiny.”
― Ruth Ware, The Death of Mrs. Westaway

“I wanted to write in my diary—to do as I always do when things get too much—let it out onto the page, like a kind of bloodletting, letting the ink and paper soak up all the grief and anger and fear until I can cope again.”
― Ruth Ware, The Death of Mrs. Westaway

“How could it be right that some people had so much, while others had so little?”
― Ruth Ware, The Death of Mrs. Westaway

“She had discovered that the most important truths often lay in what people didn’t say, and learned to read the secrets that they hid in plain sight, in their faces, and in their clothes, and in the expressions that flitted across their faces when they thought no one was watching.”
― Ruth Ware, The Death of Mrs. Westaway

“When they gave themselves over to superstition, they were giving up on shaping their own destiny.”
― Ruth Ware, The Death of Mrs Westaway

“There is no higher meaning. Sometimes things happen for no reason. Fate is cruel, and arbitrary. Touching wood, lucky charms, none of it will help you see the car you never saw coming, or avoid the tumor you didn’t realize you had. Quite the opposite, in fact. For in that moment that you turn your head to look for the second magpie, in the hope of changing your fortune from sorrow to joy—that’s when you take your attention away from the things you can change, the crossing light, the speeding car, the moment you should have turned back.”
― Ruth Ware, The Death of Mrs. Westaway

“Après moi, le déluge. . . .”
― Ruth Ware, The Death of Mrs. Westaway

“Never believe it, Hal. Never believe your own lies. Because superstition was a trap—that was what she had learned, in the years of plying her trade on the pier. Touching wood, crossing fingers, counting magpies—they were lies, all of them. False promises, designed to give the illusion of control and meaning in a world in which the only destiny came from yourself. You can’t predict the future, Hal, her mother had reminded her, time and time again. You can’t influence fate, or change what’s out of your control. But you can choose what you yourself do with the cards you’re dealt. That was the truth, Hal knew. The painful, uncompromising truth. It was what she wanted to shout at clients, at the ones who came back again and again looking for answers that she could not give. There is no higher meaning. Sometimes things happen for no reason. Fate is cruel, and arbitrary. Touching wood, lucky charms, none of it will help you see the car you never saw coming, or avoid the tumor you didn’t realize you had. Quite the opposite, in fact. For in that moment that you turn your head to look for the second magpie, in the hope of changing your fortune from sorrow to joy—that’s when you take your attention away from the things you can change, the crossing light, the speeding car, the moment you should have turned back. The people who came to her booth were seeking meaning and control—but they were looking in the wrong place. When they gave themselves over to superstition, they were giving up on shaping their own destiny.”
― Ruth Ware, The Death of Mrs. Westaway

“Never show them you're shocked, nothing makes people more defensive than censure. You're their priest, Hal. This is a confessional, of a sort. Be open - and they will give you the truth.”
― Ruth Ware, The Death of Mrs. Westaway

“the cards do not predict the future. All they can do is show us how a given situation may turn out, based on the energies we bring to the reading. Another day, another mood, a different set of energies, and the same question could have a completely different answer. We have free will. The answer the cards give can turn us in our path. All I have to do is understand what they are saying.”
― Ruth Ware, The Death of Mrs. Westaway

“Never believe it, Hal. Never believe your own lies. Because superstition was a trap—that was what she had learned, in the years of plying her trade on the pier. Touching wood, crossing fingers, counting magpies—they were lies, all of them. False promises, designed to give the illusion of control and meaning in a world in which the only destiny came from yourself. You can’t predict the future, Hal, her mother had reminded her, time and time again. You can’t influence fate, or change what’s out of your control. But you can choose what you yourself do with the cards you’re dealt. That was the truth, Hal knew. The painful, uncompromising truth. It was what she wanted to shout at clients, at the ones who came back again and again looking for answers that she could not give. There is no higher meaning. Sometimes things happen for no reason. Fate is cruel, and arbitrary. Touching wood, lucky charms, none of it will help you see the car you never saw coming, or avoid the tumor you didn’t realize you had. Quite the opposite, in fact. For in that moment that you turn your head to look for the second magpie, in the hope of changing your fortune from sorrow to joy—that’s when you take your attention away from the things you can change, the crossing light, the speeding car, the moment you should have turned back. The people who came to her booth were seeking meaning and control—but they were looking in the wrong place. When they”
― Ruth Ware, The Death of Mrs. Westaway

“Once, a long time ago, a teacher at school had called Hal “a little mouse,” and the description had offended her, though she hadn’t really known why. But now she knew why. Whatever she looked like on the surface, inside, deep in the core of her, she was not a mouse, but something quite different: a rat—small, dark, tenacious, and dogged. And now she felt like a cornered rat, fighting to survive.”
― Ruth Ware, The Death of Mrs. Westaway

“however much she tried to tell them otherwise, people liked tarot because it gave them an illusion of control, of forces guiding their lives, a buffer against the senseless randomness of fate.”
― Ruth Ware, The Death of Mrs. Westaway

“She didn’t believe in anything mystical, but she did believe in the power of the cards to reveal something about the querent, both to the reader and to the sitter themselves.”
― Ruth Ware, The Death of Mrs Westaway

“suppose what I believe is not that the cards can tell you anything you don’t already know, or that they have magical answers to your questions, but that they give you … they give you the space to question …? Does that make sense? Whether the statements I make in a reading are true or false, they give the sitter an opportunity to reflect on those forces, to analyse their instincts. I don’t know if I’m explaining this right.”
― Ruth Ware, The Death of Mrs Westaway

“The literal meaning is, as you say, ‘after me comes the flood’—but the real meaning is something more profound and ambiguous. . . . It means either, ‘after I go, everything will collapse into chaos, because I have been the only person holding up the dam,’ or else something even darker.”
― Ruth Ware, The Death of Mrs. Westaway

“She told me children were nothing but padlocks on the patriarchal shackles of marriage. That”
― Ruth Ware, The Death of Mrs. Westaway

“It was not exactly a longing to stay here, for Trepassen was too gothic and gloomy to ever feel like a truly welcoming place. It had the sense of a house where people had suffered in silence, where meals had been eaten in tension and fear, where secrets had been concealed, and where unhappiness had reigned more often than contentment.”
― Ruth Ware, The Death of Mrs. Westaway

“The family had arrived. The real test was about to begin. She felt suddenly sick with nerves, lightheaded with tension. This was it. A face-to-face encounter with her supposed relatives. Was she really going to do this? She played people for a living—in her moments of clear-eyed honesty, she knew that. But this was different. This wasn’t just telling gullible people what they wanted to hear or already knew. This was a crime.”
― Ruth Ware, The Death of Mrs. Westaway

“The message on them was not news to Hal. She had been ignoring calls and texts to that effect for months. It was the message behind the notes that made her hands shake as she placed them carefully on the coffee table, side by side. Hal was used to reading between the lines, deciphering the importance of what people didn’t say, as much as what they did. It was her job, in a way. But the unspoken words here required no decoding at all. They said, We know where you work. We know where you live. And we will come back.”
― Ruth Ware, The Death of Mrs. Westaway

“Reading the cards (tarot) was revealing, and not only for the client.”
― Ruth Ware, The Death of Mrs. Westaway

“The magpies are back.”
― Ruth Ware, The Death of Mrs. Westaway

“I'm not superstitious. I don't believe in knocking on wood, or crossing fingers, or crystal gazing, or any of that. I don't think the cards have any special occult power, though I'm not sure I'd say that outright to a client. But they do ...' She found herself struggling to articulate something she rarely dissected, event o herself. 'They do still have meaning - even if you know nothing about tarot, you can see the richness of the symbolism and the imagery. The ideas they represent ... they're universal forces that bear on all our lives. I suppose what I believe is not that the cards can tell you anything you don't already know, or that they have magical answers to your questions, but that they give you ... they give you the space to question ...? Does that make sense? Whether the statements I make in a reading are true or false, they give the sitter an opportunity to reflect on those forces, to analyze their instincts. I don't know if I'm explaining this right.”
― Ruth Ware, The Death of Mrs. Westaway

“There's nothing you can't learn from history to tell you how to deal with the present.”
― Ruth Ware, The Death of Mrs. Westaway