Quotes from book

The Prince of Tides

“He was one of those rare men who are capable of being fully in love only once in their lives.”

“There is such a thing as too much beauty in a woman and it is often a burden as crippling as homeliness and far more dangerous. It takes much luck and integrity to survive the gift of perfect beauty, and its impermanence is its most cunning betrayal.”

“I lived with the terrible knowledge that one day I would be an old man still waiting for my real life to start. Already, I pitied that old man.”

“My wound is geography. It is also my anchorage, my port of call.”

“The only word for goodness is goodness, and it is not enough.”

“There are no ideas in the South, just barbecue.”

“But even her demons she invested with inordinate beauty, consecrated them with the dignity of her attention.”

“Rape is a crime against sleep and memory; it's afterimage imprints itself like an irreversible negative from the camera obscura of dreams.”

“She was one of those Southerners who knew from an early age that the South could never be more for them than a fragrant prison, administered by a collective of loving but treacherous relatives.”

“Rape is a crime against sleep and memory; it's after image imprints itself like an irreversible negative from the camera obscure of dreams. Though their bodies would heal, their souls had sustained a damage beyond compensation”

“These are the quicksilver moments of my childhood I cannot remember entirely. Irresistible and emblematic, I can recall them only in fragments and shivers of the heart.”

“Every woman I had ever met who walked through the world appraised and classified by an extraordinary physicality had also received the keys to an unbearable solitude. It was the coefficient of their beauty, the price they had to pay.”

“Writing poetry and reading books causes brain damage.”

“Man wonders but God decides
When to kill the Prince of Tides.”

“A family is one of nature's solubles; it dissolves in time like salt in rainwater.”

“In families, there are no crimes beyond forgiveness.”