Melmoth Quotes

“What might commend so drab a creature to your sight, when overhead the low clouds split, and the upturned bowl of a silver moon pours milk out on the river?”
― Sarah Perry, Melmoth

“I wonder, when God permitted us to fall, if He knew we'd fall so far.”
― Sarah Perry, Melmoth

“This melancholy company is curiously consoling. It is restful to be exempted from the obligation to find, in every spire and pinnacle of the mother of cities, reason to wonder and delight.”
― Sarah Perry, Melmoth

“They made me think of my students, who are so young and look at the road ahead of them happily, having no idea that the road narrows and turns back on itself, and goes through dark places, and is covered all over with things to trip you up and break your ankles.”
― Sarah Perry, Melmoth

“Everything before it was prologue: everything after, a footnote.”
― Sarah Perry, Melmoth

“No librarians yet at their post, the ranks of desks miserably empty, like sockets from which teeth had been pulled.”
― Sarah Perry, Melmoth

“But Helen, he may have gone, but I am still here, and now what am I supposed to do with all this love?”
― Sarah Perry, Melmoth

“So we have free will I suppose."

"More's the pity. I always thought it would be rather relaxing to have one's life organised by the Fates.”
― Sarah Perry, Melmoth

“My reader, my dear- you know her, you have been waiting for her: it is the witness, the wandering woman- the punished world's wickedness unfolds! Oh beloved one, my companion- it is I, Melmoth, whose voice you have heard all these hours, all these days...It was I who told you to read, and to bear witness....Didn't you know? Didn't you guess?”
― Sarah Perry, Melmoth

“My sons, beware the pride of nations. There were those wholes land this was before your ancestors were born, and there will be those who claim it when your name has passed from memory.”
― Sarah Perry, Melmoth

“No nie je tu celkom prázdno: len sa pozrite na tú osamelú postavu opierajúcu sa vysoko na kamennom balkóne, ktorá sa pozerá na rieku vo svojej nekonečnej, absolútnej samote! Ako čierna loď v bezvetrí, ako posledná hviezda svietiaca na prázdnom nebi! Vari vám v srdci nezapáli ľútosť, vari k nej nechcete vystrieť ruku?”
― Sarah Perry, Melmoth

“My sons, beware the pride of nations. There were those whose land this was before your ancestors were born, and there will be those who claim it when your name has passed from memory. A bird may as well make its nest in a tree and say: no other bird shall nest here, for these branches are mine alone.”
― Sarah Perry, Melmoth

“Adaya pauses for a moment. She gestures with the toe of a well-worn shoe to a place on the pavement which has been cleared of snow. "A stumbling stone." These are familiar to Helen, who has seen them shining among the cobbles many times before: brass plates that mark places where men and women and children were taken from their homes to be murdered in the camps. She looks. The inscription is very small, and somewhat rubbed, and she is not particularly minded to stoop and read. Adaya removes her glasses. She says: "Murdered in Theresienstadt, 19th of August 1942. And only just sixteen. I wonder, when God permitted us to fall, if He knew we'd fall so far.”
― Sarah Perry, Melmoth

“it was only death, the old debt paid on all those years spent living.”
― Sarah Perry, Melmoth