The Mermaid and Mrs. Hancock Quotes

“The stories are of men who, walking on the shore, hear sweet voices far away, see a soft white back turned to them, and - heedless of looming clouds and creaking winds - forget their children's hands and the click of their wives' needles, all for the sake of the half-seen face behind a tumble of gale-tossed greenish hair.”
― Imogen Hermes Gowar, The Mermaid and Mrs Hancock

“As to her education..." says Angelica.
"'Tis done," says Mrs Lippard. "Her school could do no more for her."
"I learned nothing," growls Sukie.
"You read every book they had."
"If I had known there were so few, I would have read slower.”
― Imogen Hermes Gowar, The Mermaid and Mrs Hancock

“For mermaids are the most unnatural of creatures and their hearts are empty of love.”
― Imogen Hermes Gowar, The Mermaid and Mrs Hancock

“She is such a conduit of rage, it is a wonder she does not catch alight.”
― Imogen Hermes Gowar, The Mermaid and Mrs. Hancock

“First I sink,
Then I trickle,
Then I rush.
I am here; and here; and here. I touch this surface and also that.
I mingle, I quiver with a thousand voices, and all these voices my own. I am a great tumble of motion which torrents all in unison.
And learning and knowing are the same, and I am a mite, and we are all the space allowed to us.
And if I am made of grief, well! Here is joy, and if I am made a fury, here is peace. Rush, rush, we rush, a sparkling stream through rock and moss, deep in the cold stone of the earth. No daylight here, no dying breaths to catch up. We rush young and bright, and ever-widening, and these bitter atoms are lost in new-minted freshness. We hasten, hasten, onward to the boundless sea.”
― Imogen Hermes Gowar, The Mermaid and Mrs. Hancock

“A loss is not a void. A loss is a presence all its own; a loss takes up space; a loss is born just as any other thing that lives.”
― Imogen Hermes Gowar, The Mermaid and Mrs. Hancock

“All cats are grey with the candles out.”
― Imogen Hermes Gowar, The Mermaid and Mrs. Hancock

“And yours is what is called a house of ill repute.’
‘Nobody calls my house that. I have an excellent reputation.”
― Imogen Hermes Gowar, The Mermaid and Mrs. Hancock

“A man who is pleased to collect up the pins as he strips her is a rare jewel.”
― Imogen Hermes Gowar, The Mermaid and Mrs. Hancock

“Angelica knows about women and their empire-building. She knows also that a woman in perfect control of her fate never resorts to rudeness, and this gives her a small glow of satisfaction. She clasps Mrs Lippard’s hand and smiles her most honeyed of smiles.”
― Imogen Hermes Gowar, The Mermaid and Mrs. Hancock

“Any gentleman can tell a lie; any scoundrel can talk truth.”
― Imogen Hermes Gowar, The Mermaid and Mrs. Hancock

“This is, however, the age of unlikely ascents.”
― Imogen Hermes Gowar, The Mermaid and Mrs. Hancock

“I am cognisant, as those gentlemen are not, that all pleasures have their cost.”
― Imogen Hermes Gowar, The Mermaid and Mrs. Hancock

“A whore is a whore is a whore.”
― Imogen Hermes Gowar, The Mermaid and Mrs Hancock

“We live in a modern age, sir: the things that are wrought may be quite a extraordinary as those that are found.”
― Imogen Hermes Gowar, The Mermaid and Mrs. Hancock

“She is built like an armchair, more upholstered than clothed.”
― Imogen Hermes Gowar, The Mermaid and Mrs. Hancock

“the words spoken from behind a mask may be bolder than those uttered barefaced, but this need not mean they are more honest.”
― Imogen Hermes Gowar, The Mermaid and Mrs. Hancock

“Later she will whisper that she will never want any other man again. Such is the drug which, dewed on the eyelids, makes yesterday inconsequential, and tomorrow certain, and today golden”
― Imogen Hermes Gowar, The Mermaid and Mrs. Hancock

“I am advised to forget," he says, "but if I did not have the pain, I would have no memory of them at all.”
― Imogen Hermes Gowar, The Mermaid and Mrs. Hancock

“And a man of nobility is always such in his soul, however he may fall; and a man of humble sort is always such in his soul, however he may rise.”
― Imogen Hermes Gowar, The Mermaid and Mrs. Hancock

“Touch me again with your speaking. The hectic crowded feeling of being: I would drink it all in. Brimming with things that swell, and make me flip over on myself: elation and jealousy and spasms of love.”
― Imogen Hermes Gowar, The Mermaid and Mrs. Hancock

“where horizon to horizon is spanned by shifting twinkling faithless water, a wave humps its back and turns over with a sigh, and sends its salted whispering to Mr Hancock's ear.”
― Imogen Hermes Gowar, The Mermaid and Mrs. Hancock

“For class is a type of bubble, a membrane around one, and although one might grow within this membrane, and strain against it, it is impossible to break free from it. And a man of nobility is always such in his soul, however he may fall; and a man of humble sort is always such in his soul, however he may climb.”
― Imogen Hermes Gowar, The Mermaid and Mrs. Hancock

“Love grapples judgement and experience from the hands of even the wisest of souls: what hope is there for anybody else?”
― Imogen Hermes Gowar, The Mermaid and Mrs. Hancock

“For they apprehend that before them, pulled up to the fullest of her height, stands a true and haughty whore of the first water. And they cannot think what to do.”
― Imogen Hermes Gowar, The Mermaid and Mrs. Hancock

“Its appearance is unbeautiful. It is not what people expect of a mermaid.”
― Imogen Hermes Gowar, The Mermaid and Mrs Hancock

“too much of a muchness”
― Imogen Hermes Gowar, The Mermaid and Mrs. Hancock

“For what is she, but a spare daughter?”
― Imogen Hermes Gowar, The Mermaid and Mrs. Hancock

“Nebbiting, yebbing thingsnitch!”
― Imogen Hermes Gowar, The Mermaid and Mrs. Hancock

“It is hard to guard one's own happinesses against one who is so very much in denial of them.”
― Imogen Hermes Gowar, The Mermaid and Mrs. Hancock