The Bloody Chamber Quotes

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“…away from Paris, away from girlhood, away from the white, enclosed quietude of my mother’s apartment into the unguessable country of marriage.”
“…he had invited me to join this gallery of beautiful women, I, the poor widow’s child with my mouse-coloured hair that still bore the kinks of the plaits from which it had se recently been freed, my bony hips, my nervous, pianist’s fingers.”
1 of 29
“To know that my naivety gave him some pleasure made me take heart. Courage! I shall act the fine lady to the manner born one day, if only by virtue of default.”
“One false step, oh, my poor, dear girl, next in the fated sisterhood of his wives; one false step and into the abyss of the dark you stumbled.”
2 of 29
“My head throbbed. To see him, in his lovely, blind humanity, seemed to hurt me very piercingly, somewhere inside my breast; his figure blurred, the room swayed about after me."
“Oh, my love, my little love who brought me a white gift of music…My little love, you’ll never know how much I hate daylight!”
3 of 29
“Slowly, slowly, one foot before the other, I crossed the cobbles. The longer I dawdled over my execution, the more time it gave the avenging angel to descend…”
“…one hand on the reins of the rearing horse while the other clasped around my father’s service revolver and, behind her, the breakers of the savage, indifferent sea, like the witness of a furious justice.”
4 of 29
“Now, without a moment’s hesitation, she raised my father’s gun, took aim and put a single, irreproachable bullet through my husband’s head.”
“No paint nor powder, no matter how thick or white, can mask that red mark on my forehead; I am glad he cannot see it – nor for fear of his revulsion, since I know he sees me clearly with his heart – but, because it spares my shame."
5 of 29
“This lovely girl, whose skin possesses that same, inner light so you would have thought she, too, was made all of snow, pauses in her chores in the mean kitchen to look out at the country road.”
“And not even enough money left over to but his Beauty, his girl-child, his pet, the one white rose she said she wanted; the only gift she wanted, no matter how the case went, how rich he might once again be.”
6 of 29
“Good fellow? I am no good fellow! I am the Beast, and you must call me Beast, while I call you, Thief!”
“Take her the rose then, but bring her to dinner”
7 of 29
“Do no think she had no will of her own…[but] she would gladly have gone to the ends of the earth for her father, whom she loved dearly.”
“It seemed December still possessed his garden.”
8 of 29
“My father lost me to The Beast at cards.”
“My father said he loved me yet he staked his daughter on a hand of cards.”
9 of 29
“My tear-beslobbered father wants a rose to show that I forgive him. When I break off a stem, I ***** my finger and so he gets his rose all smeared with blood.”
“We surround ourselves…with simulacra and find it no less convenient that do most gentlemen.”
10 of 29
“The lamb must learn to run with the tigers.”
“My earrings turned back to water and trickled down my shoulders; I shrugged the drops off my beautiful fur.”
11 of 29
“proud…of his fine, musical voice. All the windows in the square fly open when I break into impromptu song.”
“Never a girl in all Bergamo so secluded except, on Sundays, they let her go to Mass, bundles up in black, with a veil on. And then she is in the company of an aged hag, her keeper, who grumps along grim as a prison dinner.”
12 of 29
For a moment, just that moment, you would have thought it was May morning…The veil comes down; so cold it is, and dark, again. It was not I alone who saw her; with that smile he swears she stole his heart. Love.”
“…love is desire sustained by unfulfillment.”
13 of 29
“I congratulate her integrity with a few affectionate cuffs round the head.”
“So may all your wives, if you need them, be rich and pretty; and all your husbands, if you want them, be young and virile; and all your cats as wily, perspicacious and resourceful as: Puss-In-Boots."
14 of 29
There is no way through the wood any more…Once you are inside it, you must stay there until it lets you out again.”
“The trees stir with a noise like taffeta skirts of women who have lost themselves in the woods and hunt round hopelessly for the way out.”
15 of 29
“Sometimes the birds, at random, all singing, strike a chord. His skin covers me entirely; we are like two halves of a seed, enclosed in the same integument.”
“…I loved him with all my heart and yet I had no wish to join the whistling congregation he kept in his cages although he looked after them very affectionately, gave them fresh water every day and fed them well.”
16 of 29
“…in his innocence he never knew he might be the death of me, although I knew from the first moment I saw him how Erl-King would do me grievous harm.”
“…with hands as gentle as rain, I shall strangle him with them…Then she will open all the cages and let the birds free; they will change back unto young girls, every one, each with the crimson imprint of his love-bite on their throats.”
17 of 29
“…she was the child of his desire and the Countess hated her.”
“So the girl picks a rose; pricks her finger on the thorn; bleeds; screams; falls.”
18 of 29
“Weeping, the Count got off his horse, unfastened his breeches and thrust his virile member into the dead girl…Then the girl began to melt. Soon there was nothing left of her…”
“The Count picked up the rose, bowed and handed it to his wife; when she touched it, she dropped it. It bites! She said.”
19 of 29
“Wearing an antique bridal gown, the beautiful queen of the vampires sits all alone in her dark, high house under the eyes of the portraits of her demented and atrocious ancestors…”
“Everything about this beautiful and ghastly lady is as it should be, queen of night, queen of terror – except her horrible reluctance for the role.”
20 of 29
"Fee fie fo fum. I smell the blood of an Englishman."
"...now she is a woman, she must have men."
21 of 29
"And could love free me from the shadows? Can a bird sing only the song it knows?"
"In death, she looked far older, less beautiful and so, for the first time, fully human."
22 of 29
“Cold; tempest; wild beats in the forest. It is a hard life.”
"They soon find it. then they stone her to death."
23 of 29
"...she knew the forest too well to fear it."
"But it was no longer a wolf's paw...There was a wedding ring on the third finger and a wart on the index finger."
24 of 29
"The wolfsong is the sound of the rending you will suffer, in itself a murdering."
"Their knives are half as big as they are, the blades are sharpened daily."
25 of 29
"There is a vast melancholy in the canticles of the wolves, melancholy infinite as the forest..."
“The forest closed upon her like a pair of jaws.”
26 of 29
"...her scarlet shawl, the colour of poppies, the colour of sacrifices, the colour of her menses."
"See! sweet and sound she sleeps in granny's bed, between the paws of the tender wolf."
27 of 29
"Could this ragged girl with brindled lugs have spoken like we do she would have called herself a wolf."
"...it is as if the fur she thought she wore had melted into her skin and become part of it."
28 of 29
"...eyes see only appetite"
"...we secluded her in animal privacy...because it showed us what we might have been."
29 of 29

Other cards in this set

Card 2

Front

“One false step, oh, my poor, dear girl, next in the fated sisterhood of his wives; one false step and into the abyss of the dark you stumbled.”

Back

“To know that my naivety gave him some pleasure made me take heart. Courage! I shall act the fine lady to the manner born one day, if only by virtue of default.”

Card 3

Front

“Oh, my love, my little love who brought me a white gift of music…My little love, you’ll never know how much I hate daylight!”

Back

Preview of the back of card 3

Card 4

Front

“…one hand on the reins of the rearing horse while the other clasped around my father’s service revolver and, behind her, the breakers of the savage, indifferent sea, like the witness of a furious justice.”

Back

Preview of the back of card 4

Card 5

Front

“No paint nor powder, no matter how thick or white, can mask that red mark on my forehead; I am glad he cannot see it – nor for fear of his revulsion, since I know he sees me clearly with his heart – but, because it spares my shame."

Back

Preview of the back of card 5
View more cards

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