“It was necessary to be afraid in order to have courage.”
― Sarah Perry, The Essex Serpent

“Cora, you cannot always keep yourself away from things that hurt you. We all wish we could, but we cannot: to live at all is to be bruised.”
― Sarah Perry, The Essex Serpent

“Not even knowledge takes all the strangeness from the world”
― Sarah Perry, The Essex Serpent

“We both speak of illuminating the world, but we have different sources of light,”
― Sarah Perry, The Essex Serpent

“Time was being served behind the walls of Newgate jail, and wasted by philosophers in cafes on the Strand; it was lost by those who wished the past were present, and loathed by those who wished the present past.”
― Sarah Perry, The Essex Serpent

“in the end it was purpose I wanted, not achievement — you see the difference?”
― Sarah Perry, The Essex Serpent

“We are cleaved together - we are cleaved apart - everything that draws me to you is everything that drives me away.”
― Sarah Perry, The Essex Serpent

“William Ransome and Cora Seaborne, stripped of code and convention, even of speech, stood with her strong hand in his: children of the earth lost in wonder.”
― Sarah Perry, The Essex Serpent

“anything that was ever worth knowing began with once upon a time”
― Sarah Perry, The Essex Serpent

“CLEAVE. To cleave to something is to cling to it with all your heart, he said, but to cleave something apart is to break it up.”
― Sarah Perry, The Essex Serpent

“I believe for most of us - for me, certainly - what's below the skin is more worth looking at than what's outside it. Turn me inside out and I'd be quite a handsome man!”
― Sarah Perry, The Essex Serpent

“Sometimes I think I sold my soul, so that I can live as I must. Oh, I don't mean without morals or conscience- I only mean with freedom to think the thoughts that come, to send them where I want them to go, not to let them run along tracks someone else set, leading only this way or that...”
― Sarah Perry, The Essex Serpent

“I am torn and I am mended - I want everything and need nothing - I love you and am content without you.

Even so, come quickly!”
― Sarah Perry, The Essex Serpent

“You are a woman, and must begin to live like one. By which I mean: have courage.”
― Sarah Perry, The Essex Serpent

“I’ve freed myself from the obligation to try and be beautiful,” said Cora: “And I was never more happy. I can’t remember when I last looked in the mirror—” “Yesterday,” said Martha. “You were admiring your nose.”
― Sarah Perry, The Essex Serpent

“He felt his faith deeply, and above all out of doors, where the vaulted sky was his cathedral nave and the oaks its transept pillars: when faith failed, as it sometimes did, he saw the heavens declare the glory of God and heard the stones cry out.”
― Sarah Perry, The Essex Serpent

“Must we make battlegrounds out of our children?”
― Sarah Perry, The Essex Serpent

“what use was it to observe the human species and try to understand it? Their rules were fathomless and no more fixed than the wind.”
― Sarah Perry, The Essex Serpent

“Luke diagnosed himself to be in love, and sought no cure for the disease.”
― Sarah Perry, The Essex Serpent

“Besides(..), it's a poor woman whose ambition is only to be loved.”
― Sarah Perry, The Essex Serpent

“Martha says I never looked odder or uglier, but you know I’ve always thought beauty a curse and am more than happy to dispense with it completely. Sometimes I forget that I’m a woman—at least—I forget to THINK OF MYSELF AS A WOMAN. All the obligations and comforts of womanhood seem to have nothing to do with me now. I’m not sure how I am supposed to behave and I’m not sure I would, if I knew.”
― Sarah Perry, The Essex Serpent

“But she’d learned the humility of scholars: that the more she knew, the more she did not know.”
― Sarah Perry, The Essex Serpent

“I said I'd go alone, but perhaps that's the point; perhaps we are always alone, no matter the company we keep.”
― Sarah Perry, The Essex Serpent

“Don't write. Don't come. I don't need it. It's not why I've written. Do you think my love will starve without your crumbs? Do you think I am not capable of humility? THIS is humility - I will tell you that I love you and know that you cannot return it. I will debase myself. It's the most that I can give and cannot be enough.”
― Sarah Perry, The Essex Serpent

“I eat an egg for my supper and drink Guinness with it and read Brontë and Hardy, Dante and Keats, Henry James and Conan Doyle.”
― Sarah Perry, The Essex Serpent

“The windows in her room were open and light was fading on the wall. She said, ‘There may be blood,’ and he said, ‘Better that way – better’; and it was Cora’s mouth he kissed, and Cora’s hand she placed where she wanted it most. Each was only second best: they wore each other like hand-me-down coats.”
― Sarah Perry, The Essex Serpent

“We've loved each other so long I've never been a man and not loved her.”
― Sarah Perry, The Essex Serpent

“They sharpen themselves on each other; each by turn is blade and whetstone; when talk falls to faith and reason they argue readily, startling themselves by growing swiftly bad-tempered ('You don't understand!' 'How can I understand when you do not even make attempts at speaking sense?').”
― Sarah Perry, The Essex Serpent

“We think we know where we're aiming, and perhaps we do - but morning comes, and a change in the light, and we find out we should've been trying in a different direction after all.”
― Sarah Perry, The Essex Serpent

“The wonderful thing about being a widow is that, really, you’re not obliged to be much of a woman anymore—”
― Sarah Perry, The Essex Serpent