Ella > Recent Status Updates

‘… this lamb of yours threatens like a bull!.’ p63

‘He would have recoiled still more had he been aware that her attachment rose unsolicited, and was bestowed where it awakened no reciprocation of sentiment; for the minute he discovered its existence he laid the blame on Heathcliff's deliberate designing.’ p55

‘A half-civilised ferocity lurked yet in the depressed brows and eyes full of black fire, but it was subdued; and his manner was even dignified: quite divested of roughness, though stern for grace.’ p52

‘He many a time spoke sternly to me about my pertness; and averred that the stab of a knife could not inflict a worse pang than he suffered at seeing his lady vexed. Not to grieve a kind master, I learned to be less touchy; and, for the space of half a year, the gunpowder lay as harmless as sand, because no fire came near to explode it.’ p50

‘She is a woman, alone in the darkness, slowly exploding.’ p255

‘She wants to inch closer to him. To spin some thread of connection between her life and his. But she does not know how.
The lonely church bell strikes three in the morning. Time is rolling onwards. Like an eye slowly closing, the night shortens by degrees.’ p68

‘…Wish and learn to smooth away the surly wrinkles, to raise your lids frankly, and change the fiends to confident, innocent angels, suspecting and doubting nothing, and always seeing friends where they are not sure of foes. Don’t get the expression of a vicious cur that appears to know the kicks it gets are it’s desert, and yet hates all the world, as well as the kicker, for what it suffers.’ p30

‘I found him very intelligent on the topics we touched; and before I went home, I was encouraged so far as to volunteer another visit to-morrow. He evidently wished no repetition of my intrusion. I shall go, notwithstanding. It is astonishing how sociable I feel myself compared with him.’ p4

And what did I do? I confess it with shame-shrunk icily into myself, like a snail; at every glance retired colder and farther; till finally the poor innocent was led to doubt her own senses, and, overwhelmed with confusion at her supposed mistake, persuaded her mamma to decamp. By this curious turn of disposition, I have gained the reputation of deliberate heartlessness; how undeserved, I alone can appreciate.’ p3

‘While enjoying a month of fine weather at the sea-coast, I was thrown into the company of a most fascinating creature: a real goddess in my eyes, as long as she took no notice of me. I 'never told my love’ vocally; still, if looks have language, the merest idiot might have guessed I was over head and ears: she understood me at last, and looked a return--the sweetest of all imaginable looks… p3

‘… She gives up trying to feel like she’s in a painting. She doesn’t have to be beautiful in this moment. She doesn’t have to be anything, ever. Her husband is not watching. Her father is not watching. Nobody was ever really watching, except Phoebe. Phoebe was the only person waiting in the dark to condemn herself for every single thing when the day was over.’ p161

‘The young man before him was fatally ill with the need to be thought special. To be famous was to have an ailment that could eat the body and the mind, a vice pretending at virtue then killing your before you’d had the chance to be good to anyone.’ p493

‘He might be delusional, but Campbell thought of himself as a feminist. Antonia resembled nobody of any gender. Her disordered passions set her up in a place of her own, where malice was always available and where personal opinion was her passport. Even before her husband became the worst man ever, Antonia was a special being.’ p377

‘That’s what they do, the young, thought Campbell. When they hear something funny they say ‘that’s funny’ instead of laughing. Maybe that’s what postmodernism was in the end: the naming of emotion, as opposed to having it.’ p266