the waves key quotes

The Waves - opening line

‘the sun had not yet risen. the sea was indistinguishable from the sky’

The Waves - Susan - child

I am a child, I love and I hate

The Waves - Bernard - melting into susan

‘but when we sit together, close’ said Bernard, ‘we melt into each other with phrases. We are edged with mist. We make an unsubstantial territory’ page 9, getting close to susan when she is upset’

The Waves - Louis’ catchphrase

‘my father is a banker in Brisbane and I speak with an Australian accent’

The Waves - Rhoda - I am…

I am turned; I am tumbled; I am stretched, among these long lights, these long waves, these endless paths, with people pursuing, pursuing

The Waves - Rhoda - School

‘this great company, all dressed in brown serge, has robbed me of my identity’

The Waves - Louis on Percival in their youth

‘look at us trooping after him, his faithful servants, to be shot like sheep’

The Waves - Louis - poetry

Yet, it is Percival I need for it is Percival who inspires poetry

The Waves - Rhoda - The Question reference

‘i will bind flowers in one garland and clasp them and present them - oh! to whom?

The Waves - neville on percival - poetry

i will send him poetry and he will perhaps respond with a picture postcard

The Waves - louis - ghost

‘I am the ghost of Louis, an ephemeral passerby, in whose mind dreams have power, and garden sounds when in the early morning petals float on fathomless depths and the birds sing’

The Waves - bernard - entrances and exits

‘I have to effect different transitions; have to cover the entrances and exits of several different men who alternatively act their parts as bernard’

The Waves - bernard - real novelist

‘the real novelist, the perfectly simple human being, could go on indefinitely, imagining. He would not integrate as I do’

The Waves - Neville - count identity

‘I do not know myself sometimes, or how to measure and name and count out the grains that make me who i am

The Waves - neville -to be recalled

yet how painful to be recalled, to be mitigated, to have oneself adulterated, mixed up, become part of another

The Waves - wish to be a poet - bernard

‘and you wish to be a poet; and you wish to be a lover. but the splendid clarity of your intelligence and the remorseless honesty of your intellect […] bring you to a halt

The Waves - bernard - Bernard; Byron

I am Bernard; I am Byron; I am this, that and the other

The Waves - Jinny - servants

‘the servants, standing here, and again here, take my name, my fresh, unknown name and toss it before me. i enter’

The Waves - bernard - seed

I may have children, may cast a fling of seed wider, beyond this generation, this doom encircled population’

The Waves - Bernard - darkness

Louis, Neville, Susan, Jinny, Rhoda - with them I am many sided. They fetch me from darkness

The Waves - Susan - fingers

‘my square tipped fingernails which I at once hid under the table’

The Waves - Bernard about Percival - hero

he is conventional; he is a hero. the little boys trooped after him on the playing field

The Waves - Rhoda - fear

if I could believe,’ said Rhoda ‘that I should grow old in pursuit and change, I should be rid of my fear: nothing persists

The Waves - Susan - I hate; I love

I hate jinny because she shows me that my hands are red, my nails are bitten.. I love with such a ferocity that it kills me when the object of my love shows by a phrase he can escape.’

The Waves - Bernard - Percival advances

Percival advances; Percival rides a flea bitten mare and wears a sun-helmet. By applying the standards of the west, by using the violent language that is natural to him, the bullock-cart is righted in less than five minutes. The oriental problem is solved

The Waves - Susan v Jinny on their feelings towards percival

Susan: ‘it is hate, it is love.’ V jinny ‘it is love… it is hate’.

The Waves - Susan - chain

‘A circle has been cast on the waters; a chain is imposed. we shall never flow freely again.’

The Waves - Neville reaction to Percival’s death (2 quotes)

‘the sails of the world have swung round and caught me on the head. all is over.’ / ‘my past is cut from me’

The Waves - Rhoda - tribute

this is my tribute to Percival: withered violets, blackened violets

The Waves - Jinny - between us

between us, you say, we could build cathedrals, dictate politics, condemn men to death, and administer the affairs of several public offices.

The Waves - Neville - time passes

time passes, yes. And we grow old. But to sit with you, alone with you, here in London, in this firelit room, you there, I here, is all… our mean lives, unsightly as they are, put on splendour and have meaning only under the eyes of love

The Waves - Bernard - time

time, which is a sunny pasture covered with a dancing light, time, which is widespread as a field at midday, becomes pendant. Time tempers to a point.

The Waves - Neville - new chapter

let us begin this new chapter, and observe the formation of this new, of this unknown, strange, altogether unidentified and terrifying experience’

The Waves - merely Neville

I am merely Neville to you, who see the narrow limits of my life and the line cannot pass. But to myself I am immeasurable; a net whose fibres pass imperceptibly beneath the world’

The Waves - Louis - abysses of time

our separate drops are dissolved; we are extinct, lost in the abysses of time, in the darkness’

The Waves - Jinny - time’s fangs

‘time’s fangs have ceased their devouring. We have triumphed over the abysses of space, with rouge, with powder, with flimsy pocket handkerchiefs.

The Waves - description before final section of the book; reminiscent of first line

now the sun had sunk. Sea and sky were indistinguishable

The Waves - Bernard - separate bodies

louis was disgusted by the nature of human flesh; Rhoda by our cruelty; Susan could not share; Neville wanted order; Jinny love and so on. We suffered terribly as we became separate bodies’

The Waves - Bernard - lullaby

no lullaby has ever occurred to me capable of singing him to rest

The Waves - Bernard - no past no future

‘there was no past, no future; merely the moment in its ring of night and our bodies; and the inevitable climax, the ecstasy’

The Waves - Bernard - phrases and fragments

some people go to priests; others to poetry; I to my friends, I to my own heart, I to seek amongst phrases and fragments something unbroken’

The Waves - Bernard - clock tick

‘yes, but suddenly one hears a clock tick. We who had been so immersed in this world, became aware of another.

The Waves - Final line

the waves broke against the shore