Barbetti Dunmore Quotes

Some of us have scars that aren't meant to be seen ~ Whitney Barbetti

The human longing for story is so powerful, so primitive, that it seems like something not learned, but locked into our genes. ~ Helen Dunmore

I think that everything that happens to you stays in you, even if it stays in a part of your mind where you can't find it. That's why you should never try to forget when people urge you to. ~ Helen Dunmore

This is not an ending; ~ Whitney Barbetti

For you where never my blood sister so no more shall I call you little sister ~ Helen Dunmore

But her features were arranged exactly how some primal aesthetic blueprint in his head envisioned beauty. It made her look oddly familiar, as if he had long known her and now she had walked back into his life. Impossible, that. ~ Evie Dunmore

I don't want to merely exist, Parker. I want to live. I want to leave the world with that one sweet moment. ~ Whitney Barbetti

They will heal anyway, with time. We ... are strong. It takes more ... to conquer us.Scars don't matter, little one. They are the marks of the battles we have won. ~ Helen Dunmore

He said a fortuneteller had told Mum's fortune once, and after that, she's never gone out on sea again. It was years ago, but she never has. Not once." said Conner
"What did the fortuneteller say?" I asked
"Dad wouldn't tell me. It must have been something really bad though."
"maybe the fortuneteller said that Mum would die by drowning." I suggested.
"Don't be stupid Saph. A fortuneteller wouldn't ever say that to someone. You're going to drown, that'll be ten pounds please ~ Helen Dunmore

Relationships are stupid." My voice sounded much calmer than I was.
"No truer words were ever spoken, my sweet, seething sea witch. ~ Whitney Barbetti

I can remember being in my pram: children stayed in their prams much longer then than they do now. A big bouncy pram with black covers and a hood with metal clips that could trap your fingers. I was looking up at my sister who was sitting on the pram seat, with her back to me. ~ Helen Dunmore

Sometimes, the pain is all that´s left to assure you it was real. ~ Whitney Barbetti

You're ten below. Cold as ice. ~ Whitney Barbetti

I don't know how you humans ever get anything done, you ask so many questions. ~ Helen Dunmore

Mourning Ruby is not a flat landscape: it is more like a box with pictures painted on every face. And each face is also a door which opens, I hope, to take the reader deep into the book. ~ Helen Dunmore

Perhaps you can explain it to me, then," she said, "how is it fair that my utterly inept cousin is in command of me, for no reason other than that he's a man and I'm a woman? How is it fair that I master Latin and Greek as well as any man at Oxford, yet I am taught over a baker's shop? How is it fair that a man can tell me my brain was wired wrong, when his main achievement in life seems to be his birth into a life of privilege? And why do I have to beg a man to please make it his interest that I, too, may vote on the laws that govern my life every day? ~ Evie Dunmore

You know how the sea grinds down stones into sand, over years and years and years? Nobody ever sees it, it happens so slowly. And then at last the sand is so fine you can sift it in your fingers. Losing Dad is like being worn away by a force that's so powerful nothing could resist it. We are like stones, being changed into something completely different.
If you looked casually at me and Mum and Conor now, you might think we were the same people as we were a year ago, except that we're a year older. But we are not the same people. We've changed where no one can see it, inside our minds and our feelings. I didn't want us to change, but I can't stop it. ~ Helen Dunmore

I am. I'm rude because I don't conform to society's standards that white lies are inconsequential. I don't believe in hiding behind words that aren't truthful. I'm an impatient man. I don't beat around the bush. If you ask me something, I won't lie to you. ~ Whitney Barbetti

It hurts, you know. Loving you. It hurts now. But I'd rather suffer through this pain in my final moments than suffer through being alone, from living a life unfilled. ~ Whitney Barbetti

However, I began to submit poems to British magazines, and some were accepted. It was a great moment to see my first poems published. It felt like entering a tradition. ~ Helen Dunmore

Because I can feel your presence as poignantly as I can feel your absence." With his hands over mine, he glided them down to his chest, pressing my palms against his heart."Because both are a choice, I choose your presence, even when it´d be easier to choose absence." His heart beat several times beneath my palms. "Because I don´t want easy, Mira. I want you. Even if it means holding you while you bleed out. Even if it means waiting for you to manage your pain in a way that doesn´t hurt you or me. Even if it means a hundred repeats of the night before. ~ Whitney Barbetti

I could start with Mandelstam, who was a huge influence on my early writing. ~ Helen Dunmore

The art of hiding in plain sight used to be second nature, and now it has become the whole of him ~ Helen Dunmore

He held me as if my bones were made of glass, as if my skin would tear beneath his lips if he applied too much pressure. When his lips pressed against the pulse at the base of my throat, I wondered if he could feel the power in my pulse, the power he was solely responsible for. As if in answer, his hand moved from my neck to my chest, resting over the space that contained my heart. There was something beautiful and intentional about that gesture, like he was acknowledging the mortal part of me that reacted so restlessly to his touch. ~ Whitney Barbetti

To try to expunge an individual's history is a terrible violation. ~ Helen Dunmore

I didn't choose Russia but Russia chose me. I had been fascinated from an early age by the culture, the language, the literature and the history to the place. ~ Helen Dunmore

Anna's too young yet to know that the past is just as real as the present, even though you have to pretend that it isn't, and carry on towards the future. ~ Helen Dunmore

That was why they called it temptation - it never presented itself as something ugly, or tepid, or harmless; no, it came in the guise of glorious feelings and a sense of utter rightness, even when it was wrong. That was why one needed principles. Regrettable, that her grasp on them was so shaky when it counted. ~ Evie Dunmore

-It's rude to stare.
-I never claimed to be anything else. ~ Whitney Barbetti

Some things, if you don't do them, they follow you all your life, whispering in your ear," says Granny Carne. She faces me sternly as if she's judging me. "You'll find a dozen good reasons why you pulled back from the Call, and you'll even fool yourself that you had no other choice. But in your bed at night you'll curse yourself for a coward. ~ Helen Dunmore

I used to think that when a child was born, a parent made a promise to stay with him. Or her. But if there's a promise, it can be broken. That first Matthew Trewhella broke his promises. I wonder if he ever forgot them, or did the torn edges of his promises hurt him to the end of his life?

When someone goes away from you suddenly, without warning, that's what it's like. A rip, a torn edge inside you. I have a torn edge in me, and Dad has a torn edge in him. I'm not sure if those edges will still fit together by the time I find him. ~ Helen Dunmore

Darling," he said, "I have only begun to love you. ~ Evie Dunmore

I enjoy research; in fact research is so engaging that it would be easy to go on for years, and never write the novel at all. ~ Helen Dunmore

You are like a drug to me. Dangerous. Addicting. I can't get enough of you." He brought our hands above water and kissed one of my hands, linked with his. "But I want more, more than just a night, more than just a few touches. And I have a feeling that once we cross that line, you will run away. ~ Whitney Barbetti

I don't love anything." - Parker
"I know." - Everett ~ Whitney Barbetti

I was always influenced by language. ~ Helen Dunmore

In a world without air all you breathe is adventure! ~ Helen Dunmore

And I´m not going to let you let me go. ~ Whitney Barbetti

That night I dreamt of the moment I found my mother's body.
My life was a series of befores and afters: before my mother's death and after my mother's death. Before I left the Monster and after I left the Monster.
The first thing I remembered about my mother's death was the minutes after. I'd always dreamt of it this way; remembering the after. It was during the after that I remembered the before. ~ Whitney Barbetti

Read widely and with discrimination. Bad writing is contagious.
[Ten rules for writing fiction, The Guardian, 20 February 2010 (with Diana Athill, Margaret Atwood, Roddy Doyle, Helen Dunmore, Geoff Dyer, Anne Enright, Richard Ford, Jonathan Franzen, Esther Freud, Neil Gaiman, David Hare, and AL Kennedy)] ~ P.D. James

They wanted spring, of course they wanted it, more than anything. They longed for sun with every pore of their skin. But spring hurts. If spring can come, if things can be different, how can you bear what your existence has been? ~ Helen Dunmore

Dad was alive. I believed Conor, but I still didn't really know it.
But now I do. ~ Helen Dunmore