Miles Quotes

“Shame is a terrible thing. Necessary, but terrible.”

″‘He was looking for someone else, you say—someone who was not you?’ ‘He was looking for little Miles.’ A portentous clearness now possessed me. ‘That’s whom he was looking for.’ ‘But how do you know?’ ‘I know, I know, I know!’ My exaltation grew.‘“And you know, my dear!’

“If a child gives the effect another turn of the screw, what do you say to two children—?”

″‘Think me — for a change — bad!’ I shall never forget the sweetness and gaiety with which he brought out the word, nor how, on top of it, he bent forward and kissed me. It was practically the end of everything.”

“Miles and Flora saw more — things terrible and unguessable.”

″‘Oh, it wasn’t him!’ Mrs. Grose with emphasis declared. ‘It was Quint’s own fancy. To play with him, I mean—to spoil him.’ She paused a moment; then she added: ‘Quint was much too free.’ This gave me, straight from my vision of his face—such a face!—a sudden sickness of disgust. ‘Too free with my boy?’ ‘Too free with everyone!‘”

“Peter Quint — you devil!”

“I want my own sort!”

“To gaze into the depths of blue of the child’s eyes and pronounce their loveliness a trick of premature cunning was to be guilty of a cynicism in preference to which I naturally preferred to abjure my judgment and, so far as might be, my agitation. I couldn’t abjure for merely wanting to, but I could repeat to Mrs. Grose—as I did there, over and over, in the small hours—that with their voices in the air, their pressure on one’s heart, and their fragrant faces against one’s cheek, everything fell to the ground but their incapacity and their beauty.”