The Luminaries Quotes

“What was glimpsed in Aquarius—what was envisioned, believed in, prophesied, predicted, doubted, and forewarned—is made, in Pisces, manifest. Those solitary visions that, but a month ago, belonged only to the dreamer, will now acquire the form and substance of the real. We were of our own making, and we shall be our own end.

And after Pisces? Out of the womb, the bloody birth. We do not follow: we cannot cross from last to first. Aries will not admit a collective point of view, and Taurus will not relinquish the subjective. Gemini's code is an exclusive one. Cancer seeks a source, Leo, a purpose, and Virgo, a design; but these are projects undertaken singly. Only in the zodiac's second act will we begin to show ourselves: in Libra, as a notion, in Scorpio, as a quality, and in Sagittarius, as a voice. In Capricorn we will gain memory, and in Aquarius, vision; it is only in Pisces, the last and oldest of the zodiacal signs, that we acquire a kind of selfhood, something whole. But the doubled fish of Pisces, that mirrored womb of self and self-awareness, is an ourobouros of mind—both the will of fate, and the fated will—and the house of self-undoing is a prison built by prisoners, airless, door-less, and mortared from within.

These alterations come upon us irrevocably, as the hands of the clock-face come upon the hour.”
― Eleanor Catton, The Luminaries

“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

“Pritchard was lonely, and like most lonely souls, he saw happy couples everywhere.”
― Eleanor Catton, The Luminaries

“What an unrequited love it is, this thirst! But is it love, when it is unrequited?”
― Eleanor Catton, The Luminaries

“Let's just enjoy it for ourselves. Dawn is such a private hour, don't you think? Such a solitary hour. One always hears that said of midnight, but I think of midnight as remarkably companionable—everyone together, sleeping in the dark.'

'I am afraid I am interrupting your solitude,' Anna said.

'No, no,' the boy said. 'Oh, no. Solitude is best enjoyed in company.' He grinned at her, quickly, and Anna smiled back. 'Especially the company of one other soul,' he added, turning back to the sea. 'It's dreadful to feel alone and really be alone. But I love to enjoy the feeling when I'm not.”
― Eleanor Catton, The Luminaries

“It is perfectly serendipitous,' said the boy, descending the steps to the street. 'Fancy that—us meeting a second time! Of course I have wished for it, very much—but they were vain wishes; the kind one makes in twilight states, you know, idly. I remember just what you said, as we rounded the heads of the harbor—in the dawn light. "I should like to see him in a storm," you said. I have thought of it many times, since; it was the most delightfully original of speeches.'

Anna blushed at this: not only had she never heard herself described as an original before, she had certainly never supposed that her utterances qualified as 'speeches.”
― Eleanor Catton, The Luminaries

“...and the hermit's spirit detaches itself, ever so gently, and begins its lonely passage upward, to find its final resting place among the stars.”
― Eleanor Catton, The Luminaries

“Has he made an avowal of his love?'

'No,' Anna said. 'He doesn't need to. I know it, just the same.”
― 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

“It's not vague,' Anna said. 'I'm certain of it. Just as when you're certain you did have a dream...you knew you dreamed...but you can't remember any of the details.”
― Eleanor Catton, The Luminaries

“Cowell Devlin sighed. Yes, he understood Anna Wetherell at long last, but it was not a happy understanding. Devlin had known many women of poor prospects and limited means, whose only transport out of the miserable cage of their unhappy circumstance was the flight of the fantastic. Such fantasies were invariably magical—angelic patronage, invitations into paradise—and Anna's story, touching though it was, showed the same strain of the impossible. Why, it was painfully clear! The most eligible bachelor of Anna's acquaintance possessed a love so deep and pure that all respective differences between them were rendered immaterial? He was not dead—he was only missing? He was sending her 'messages' that proved the depth of his love—and these were messages that only she could hear? It was a fantasy, Devlin thought. It was a fantasy of the girl's own devising. The boy could only be dead.”
― Eleanor Catton, The Luminaries

“You want Mr. Staines to love you very much, don't you, Miss Wetherell?'

Anna seemed offended by his implication. 'He does love me.'

'That wasn't my question.'

She squinted at him. 'Everyone wants to be loved.'

'That's very true,' Devlin said, sadly. 'We all want to be loved—and need to be loved, I think. Without love, we cannot be ourselves.”
― Eleanor Catton, The Luminaries

“You're of a mind with Mr. Staines.'

'Am I?'

'Yes,' Anna said. 'That is precisely the sort of thing that he would say.'

'Your Mr. Staines is quite the philosopher, Miss Wetherell.'

'Why, Reverend,' Anna said, smiling suddenly, 'I believe you've just paid yourself a compliment.”
― Eleanor Catton, The Luminaries

“Is it the smoke?' the boy said, shivering slightly. 'I've never touched the stuff, myself, but how it claws at one...like a thorn in every one of your fingers, and a string around your heart...and one fees it always. Nagging. Nagging.”
― Eleanor Catton, The Luminaries

“How would I overlook the name Moody? Why, that's like overlooking Hanover, or—or Plantagenet.'

The woman laughed. 'I would hardly compare Adrian Moody to a royal line!”
― Eleanor Catton, The Luminaries

“Are you fixing to stay in this country, then, Walter? After you've dug yourself a patch, and made yourself a pile?'

'I expect my luck will decide that question for me.'

'Would you call it lucky to stay, or lucky to go?'

'I'd call it lucky to choose,' said Moody—surprising himself, for that was not the answer he would have given, three months prior.”
― Eleanor Catton, The Luminaries

“But could he endure it, that other men knew her in a way that he, Staines, did not? He did not know.”
― 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