Astral Twins Quotes

“He and Anna lay facing each other, Staines lying on his left hip, and Anna, on her right, both of them with their knees drawn up to their chests, Staines with one hand tucked beneath his bandaged shoulder, Anna with one hand tucked beneath her cheek. She must have turned toward him, some time in the night: her left arm was flung outward, her fingers reaching, her palm turned down...

Devlin came closer...He looked down at Anna and Emery, their mirrored bodies, facing in. They were breathing in tandem.

So they are lovers, he thought, looking down at them. So they are lovers, after all. He knew it from the way that they were sleeping.”
― Eleanor Catton, The Luminaries

“...Emery Staines, lost to meditation, doubts his own intentions, his natural frankness having accepted very readily the fact of his desire, and the fact of his delight, and the ease with which his pleasure might be got, expressions that cause him no shame, but that nevertheless give him pause, for he feels, whatever the difference in their respective stations, a certain bond with Anna Wetherell, a connexion, by virtue of which he feels less, rather than more, complete, in the sense that her nature, being both oppositional to and in accord with his own, seems to illumine those internal aspects of his character that his external manner does not or cannot betray, leaving him feeling both halved and doubled, or in other words, doubled when in her presence, and halved when out of it, and as a consequence he becomes suddenly doubtful of those qualities of frankness and good-natured curiosity upon which he might ordinarily have acted, without doubt and without delay; these meditations being interrupted, frequently, by a remark of Joseph Pritchard's —'if it weren't for her debt, her dependency, she'd have had a dozen propositions from a dozen men'—that keeps returning, uncomfortably and without variation, to his mind.”
― Eleanor Catton, The Luminaries

“Tonight shall be the very beginning.'

'Was it?'

'It shall be. For me.'

'My beginning was the albatrosses.'

'That is a good beginning; I am glad it is yours. Tonight shall be mine.'

'Ought we to have different ones?'

'Different beginnings? I think we must.'

'Will there be more of them?'

'A great many more. Are your eyes closed?'

'Yes. Are yours?'

'Yes. Though it's so dark it hardly makes a difference.'

'I feel—more than myself.'

'I feel—as though a new chamber of my heart has opened.'

'Listen.'

'What is it?'

'The rain.”
― Eleanor Catton, The Luminaries