May Sinclair > Quotes

“She found that by a system of punctual movements she could give to her existence the reasonable appearance of an aim.”
― May Sinclair, The Life and Death of Harriett Frean

“You can't conceive the perverse ingenuity he could put into hiding his affections.”
― May Sinclair, The Token

“Though he plunged into work as another man might have plunged into dissipation, to drown the thought of her, you could see that he had no longer any interest in it; he no longer loved it. He attacked it with a fury that had more hate in it than love.”
― May Sinclair, The Token

“You think the past affects the future. Has it never struck you that the future may affect the past? In your innocence there was the beginning of your sin. You were what you were to be.”
― May Sinclair, Where Their Fire Is Not Quenched

“This -- this religion of theirs -- was filthy; ugly, like the shiny black covers of their Bibles where their fingers left a grey, greasy smear. Filthy and frightful; like funerals. You might as well be buried alive, five coffins deep in a pit of yellow clay.”
― May Sinclair, Mary Olivier: A Life

“Audrey Craven was first published in 1897 by William Blackwood and Sons in England. Between the journal and book publishing, Blackwood and Sons would release writings by some of the most renowned novelists of the nineteenth century, including George Eliot and Joseph Conrad.”
― May Sinclair, Delphi Collected Works of May Sinclair

“In the last death we shall be shut up in this room, behind that locked door, together. We shall lie here together, for ever and ever, joined so fast that even God can't put us asunder. We shall be one flesh and one spirit, one sin repeated for ever, and ever; spirit loathing flesh, flesh loathing spirit; you and I loathing each other.'
'Why? Why?' she cried.
'Because that's all that's left us. That's what you made of love.”
― May Sinclair, Where Their Fire Is Not Quenched

“Wool-gathering. Gathering wool. The room was full of wool; wool flying about; hanging in the air and choking you. Clogging your mind. Old grey wool out of pew cushions that people had sat on for centuries, full of dirt.

Wool, spun out, wound round you, woven in a net. You were tangled and strangled in a net of unclean wool. They caught you in it when you were a baby a month old. Mamma, Papa, and Uncle Victor. You would have to cut and tug and kick and fight your way out. They were caught in it themselves, they couldn't get out. They didn't want to get out. The wool stopped their minds working. They hated it when their minds worked, when anybody's mind worked. Aunt Lavvy's -- yours.”
― May Sinclair, Mary Olivier: A Life

“The Dark Night (XVIII)
- 1863-1946


Our love is woven
Of a thousand strands—
The cool fragrance of the first lilac
At morning,
The first dew on the grass,
The smell of wild mint in the wood,
The pungent and earthy smell of ground ivy crushed under our feet;
Songs of birds, songs of great poets;
The leaping of the red squirrel in the tree,
The running of the river,
The commotion of stars and clouds in the high winds at night;
And dark stillness.
It is adorned with all the flowers
That stand in our garden;
It holds the night and the day.

Our love is made
Of the South Wind and the West Wind,
And the soft falling of rain;
Of white April evenings;
It is made of trees,
And of the many-coloured fields on the hills;
Of horizons,
Dark sea-blue of the west, thin sky-blue of the east,
With a yellow road between.
The flames of sunset and sunrise
Mingle in the fire of our love.”
― May Sinclair