Philip Sington Quotes

He reached into the grate, picked out a couple of scraps, smoothed them out, leaning close to the flickering light. He was curious to see what it was Zoia had decided to destroy.

Her hair, just long enough now to tie back in a knot, had a coppery sheen, a hint of fire in the darkness.

The wind funnelled down the covered platform, jostling the passengers and tearing at their clothes. A woman's scarf whipped by overhead, somersaulting as if intoxicated by the sudden taste of freedom.

To rehearse imaginary conversations on paper is called literature. To do so out loud is called madness.

But then, he calls many things mad that he does not care for. Perhaps that is easier than accepting them.

One of the joys of being in love is that it clarifies your priorities. Complication arises from not knowing what you want.

One thing I knew about the novelist's task: when in doubt, write; when empty, write; when afraid, write. Nothing is more impenetrable than the blank page. The blank page is the void, the absence of sense and feeling, the white light of literary death.

I have found that in fiction one is freer to speak the truth, if only because in fiction the truth is not expected or required. You may easily disguise it, so that it is only recognized much later, when the story and the characters have faded into darkness.

We drank our coffee the Russian way. That is to say we had vodka before it and vodka afterwards.

And then they would watch her closely as the dark, coagulated masses took form before her eyes, became flesh and bone, became gradually human. For all their show of reluctance, she had a sense that they enjoyed introducing her to these horrors, as seducers took pleasure in the corruption of innocence.

Desire is an appetite, quickly sated. Longing is a wound, an opening in the heart or the spirit. Whatever the cause, whatever the duration, it almost always leaves a scar.

Old Prague was a story-book city caked in grime: ancient, soot-blackened. History lived in every detail: in the deerstalker rooftops and the blue-sparking trams. He wandered the streets in disbelief, photographing everything, images from Kafka crowding into his head. With the turn of every corner it came back to him: the special frisson you get behind enemy lines.

The future can always wait so long as the here-and-now is rapturous.

Problems are there to be solved. How dull life would be without them.

All writers are insecure, the male ones especially. It's well known. Why else would they spend so much time on make-believe? They're only happy in their imaginary worlds, because that's where they're in charge - where they're God. Did you know that Hemingway's mother dressed him as a girl until he was six years old?
I was not offended by Claudia's glib psychological theory. Like many glib psychological theories, it struck me as fundamentally correct.

Who is the other woman whose photograph I do not have? If my mother was the first in my life, she was the last: my lover and my downfall, my hope and my despair. Her photographs I burned in an ashtray, one at a time - some might say to be rid of the evidence. Her name was Theresa Aden: Theresa like the saint; Aden like Eden, complete with snake.

... it seemed to Kirsch that the most reliable guide to the mental landscape of a patient was the patient himself. He was better placed to explain his behaviour and his experiences than anyone else. Yet wherever Kirsch went, the patient was the very last person anyone thought to consult. Because, of course, the patient was insane.