Sena Jeter Naslund’s “Ahab’s Wife, or The Star-Gazer” Quotes (9 Quotes)

Ahab was neither my first husband nor my last

Great minds may have cold hearts. Form but no color. It is an incompleteness. And so they are afraid of any woman who both thinks and feels deeply.

Honesty, like any inclination, can become a ruling passion, a monomania almost.

If you meet a woman of whatever complexion who sails her life with strength and grace and assurance, talk to her! And what you will find is that there has been a suffering, that at some time she has left herself for hanging dead.

Is it not the case that many a life journey starts out in the opposite direction to its destiny?

Pardon me, dear human self, capable of the most heinous degradation, capable of soaring.

That night, though I was weary with the day, I took to the roof again.... My fingertips rested lightly on the wooden rail. I could not know if stars were equal to each other, but if they were, then the dim ones must be far and farther away, and toward those reaches I hurled my soul.

That's the way it is in life. You let go of what is beautiful and unique. You pursue something new and don't even know that the wind of your own running is a thief.

Where we choose to be, where we choose to be--we have the power to determine that in our lives. We cannot reel time backward or forward, but we can take ourselves to the place that defines our being.