“Stiffly he knelt beside her, watching himself kneel, take her hand, kiss her hand and put it to his face. There was no doubt in either soul or body that she was dead. Dead. Gone. Happened. Lost. Over.”
Quotes
“All these years she had lived in isolation within herself and, strangely, from herself, never wanting or daring to look back. In the stone-floored echoing hall with the heavy low beams, her problems with Edward were already present in those first few seconds, in their first exchange of looks.”
Quote from ‘On Chesil Beach’ by Ian McEwan
“He had to stop his body being swept away, by wind, by time, by continental drift, by shooting stars, by shame.”
Quote from ‘Being Dead’ by Jim Crace
“Then all at once they scatter yellow rose petals into the water, and as the river carries them past the cafe it is as though there was a reflection in the water of the cloths of heaven.”
Quote from ‘Love Like Salt’ by Helen Stevenson
“Well, whatever it is I’ve ended, it’s given me this very swanky green coat.
He wraps it around him. It’s a good fit, it smells leafy and fresh. He would make a good tailor. He has made something, made something of himself. His mother would be pleased at last.
Oh God. Is there still mother after death?”
From ‘Autumn’ by Ali Smith
“But I began then to think of time as having a shape, something you could see, like a series of liquid transparencies, one laid on top of another. You don’t look back along time but down through it, like water. Sometimes this comes to the surface, sometimes that, sometimes nothing. Nothing goes away.
From ‘Cat’s Eye’ by Margaret Atwood
“When one tugs at a single thing in nature, he finds it attached to the rest of the world.”
John Muir
‘The sand was moving. Like restless demerara, what had once been solid rock was not done yet. The whole beach was tilling itself down, as she stood here, moving on. Sands.”
From ‘Jellyfish’ by Janice Galloway
“It was more that she wasn’t hiding behind anything. She never did. Whenever she spoke it was always straight from the heart, never for the sake of speaking.”
From ‘A Death in the Family’ by Karl Ove Knausgaard
“Moments left, Teddy thought. A handful of heartbeats. That was what life was. A heartbeat followed by a heartbeat. A breath followed by a breath. One moment followed by another moment and then there was a last moment. Life was as fragile as a bird’s heartbeat, fleeting as the bluebells in the wood. It didn’t matter, he realized, he didn’t mind, he was going where millions had gone before and where millions would follow after. He shared his fate with the many. And now. This moment. This moment was infinite. He was part of the infinite. The tree and the rock and the water. The rising of the sun and the running of the deer. Now.”
From “A God in Ruins” by Kate Atkinson
“I derive the greatest pleasure from travelling. I like the idea of knocking about the world and getting used to the ways and customs of men.”
Margaret Fountaine
“The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars”
