Deborah Levy Quotes

History is the dark magician inside us, tearing at our liver. (Deborah Levy, Hot Milk, p. 185) ~ Deborah Levy

It is dishonest to give me a poem and pretend to want my opinion when what you really want are reasons to live. ~ Deborah Levy

I pursue my case, Monsieur, I speak English, Italian and German, and I want justice in all three languages. I have been damaged by unlove. It makes at inappropriate moments when I should be dignified. ~ Deborah Levy

What is a sigh? That would be another good subject for a field study. Is it just a long, deep, audible exhalation of breath? Rose's sigh was intense but not subdued. It was frustrated but not yet sad. A sigh resets the respiratory system so it was possible that my mother had been holding her breath, which suggests she was more nervous than she appeared to be. A sigh is an emotional response to being set a difficult task. ~ Deborah Levy

As much as I try to make the past keep still and mind its manners, it moves and murmurs with me through every day. ~ Deborah Levy

When a female writer walks a female character into the center of her literary enquiry (or a forest) and this character starts to project shadow and light all over the place, she will have to find a language that is in part to do with unknotting the ways in which she has been put together by the Societal System in the first place. She will have to be canny in how she sets about doing this because she will have many delusions of her own. In fact it would be best if she was uncanny. ~ Deborah Levy

She had no God to plead to for mercy or luck. It would be true to say she depended instead on human kindness and painkillers. ~ Deborah Levy

We have travelled a long distance from the cow with a bucket of raw milk under its udder. We are a long way from home.' This ~ Deborah Levy

She is dark. He is fair. She comes from there. He comes from here. They like each other. It is an easy and lovely lust ... ~ Deborah Levy

The unloved watch the loved perform the small rituals of their loving. ~ Deborah Levy

I would like to forget the image of the ship's crane at Southampton docks when it lifted into the sky the three wooden trunks which held all that my family owned. There is only one memory I want to preserve. It is Maria, who is also Zama, sipping condensed milk on the steps of the doep at night. The African nights were warm. The stars were bright. I loved Maria but I'm not sure she loved me back. Politics and poverty had separated her from her own children and she was exhausted by the white children in her care, by everyone and everything in her care. At the end of the day, away from the people who stole her life's energy and made her tired, she had found a place to rest, momentarily, from myths about her character and her purpose in life." (from "Things I Don't Want to Know" by Deborah Levy) ~ Deborah Levy

Loners are the opposition. Pensive, thoughtful and furious, marooned with stories that need to be spoken out loud and no one to listen, curries to be cooked and no one to taste, days and days of traffic signals to be manoeuvred and no one to congratulate except other loners: they find each other because like all good maps there are familiar signs that lead the way. The loner who both observes and creates worlds necessarily speaks with many tongues. It is with these tongues that she explores the contours of the centre and the margins, the signs for somewhere and elsewhere and here and now. ~ Deborah Levy

Her taste for symmetry and structure, it helped her thoughts drift. Symmetry did not chain her, it set her free. (p. 85) ~ Deborah Levy

Yes, there had been many times I called my daughters back to zip up their coats. All the same, I knew they would rather be cold and free. ~ Deborah Levy

The young woman was a window waiting to be climbed through. A window that she guessed was a little broken anyway. ~ Deborah Levy

Life is only worth living because we hope it will get better and we'll all get home safely. But you tried and you did not get home safely. You did not get home at all. ~ Deborah Levy

Everything was calm. The sun was shining. I was swimming in the deep. And then, when I surfaced 20 years later, I discovered there was a storm, a whirlpool, a blasting gale lifting the waves over my head.
At first I wasn't sure I'd make it back to the boat and then I realised I didn't want to make it back to the boat. Chaos is supposed to be what we most fear but I have come to believe it might be what we most want. If we don't believe in the future we are planning, the house we are mortgaged to, the person who sleeps by our side, it is possible that a tempest (long lurking in the clouds) might bring us closer to how we want to be in the world.
Life falls apart. We try to get a grip and hold it together. And then we realise we don't want to hold it together. ~ Deborah Levy

It is not enough to feel love. More important is how we express love. ~ Deborah Levy

Time has shattered, it's cracked like my lips. ~ Deborah Levy

To become a WRITER I had to learn to INTERRUPT, to speak up, to speak a little louder, and then LOUDER, and then to just speak in my own voice which is NOT LOUD AT ALL. ~ Deborah Levy

He wore a delicate ring with a tiny sleepy diamond embedded in the latticed gold band. He said, "My wife chose this wedding ring for me. It's Victorian, not really my style, but it reminds me of her." And then he said, "My wife crashed the car again." Ah, I thought, as we walked past the golden trees, she does not have a name. She is a wife. I wondered why my male colleague often forgot the names of most of the women he met at social events. He would always refer to them as someone's wife or girlfriend, as if that was all I needed to know.

If we don't have names, who are we? ~ Deborah Levy

I wanted my whole life so far to slip away with the rolling waves, to begin a different kind of life. But I didn't know what that meant or how to get to it ~ Deborah Levy

Life falls apart. We try to get a grip and hold it together. And then we realize we don't want to hold it together. ~ Deborah Levy

I have been waiting on her all my life. I was the waitress. Waiting on her and waiting for her. What was I waiting for? Waiting for her to step into her self or step out of her invalid self. Waiting for her to take the voyage out of her gloom, to buy a ticket to a vital life. ~ Deborah Levy

I was flesh thirst desire dust blood lips cracking feet blistered knees skinned hips bruised, but I was so happy not to be napping on a sofa under a blanket with an older man by my side and a baby on my lap. ~ Deborah Levy

What is worse? To be chained all day with a bowl of water, or to be free and die of thirst? ~ Deborah Levy

I can't stand THE DEPRESSED. It's like a job, it's the only thing they work hard at. Oh good my depression is very well today. Oh good today I have another mysterious symptom and I will have another one tomorrow. The DEPRESSED are full of hate and bile and when they are not having panic attacks they are writing poems. What do they want their poems to DO? Their depression is the most VITAL thing about them. Their poems are threats. ALWAYS threats. There is no sensation that is keener or more active than their pain. They give nothing back except their depression. It's just another utility. Like electricity and water and gas and democracy. They could not survive without it. ~ Deborah Levy

play with whatever the day brought in. ~ Deborah Levy

I had energy because I had no choice but to have energy. I had to write to support my children and I had to do all the heavy lifting. Freedom is never free. Anyone who has struggled to be free knows how much it costs. ~ Deborah Levy

Sometimes we want to unbelong as much as we want to belong. ~ Deborah Levy

I bought the air freshener for four euro because it was a kind of artefact translated into many languages, and also because it was clearly an interpretation of a woman ( breasts belly apron eyelashes) and I had becomes confused by the signs for servicios in public places. I could not figure out why one sign was male and the other female. The most common stick figure sign was not particularly male or female. Did I need this aerosol to make things clearer to me? What kind of clarity was I after?
I had conquered Juan who was Zeus the thunderer as far as I was concerned, but the signs were all mixed up because his job in the injury hut was to tend the wounded with his tube of ointment. He was maternal, brotherly, he was like a sister, perhaps paternal, he had become my lover. Are we all lurking in each other's sign? Do I and the woman on the air freshener belong to the same sign? Another aeroplane was flying above the market, it's metal body heavy in the sky. A male pilot I had met in the Coffee House had told me that an aircraft was always referred to as 'she'. His task was to keep her in balance, to make her a extension of his hands, to make her responsive to the lightest of touch. She was sensitive and needed to be handled delicately. A week later, after we had slept together, I discovered that he was also responsive to the lightest of touch.
It wasn't clarity I was after. I wanted things to be less clear. ~ Deborah Levy

We are East & West looting each other. ~ Deborah Levy

She was not a poet. She was a poem. ~ Deborah Levy

Has anyone ever actually told you how up yourself you are? ~ Deborah Levy

When our father does the things he needs to do in the world, we understand it is his due. If our mother does the things she needs to do in the world, we feel she has abandoned us. It is a miracle she survives our mixed messages, written in society's most poisoned ink. It is enough to drive her mad. ~ Deborah Levy

They would be enchanted beginners all over again, ... That was the best thing to be in life. ~ Deborah Levy

It was not that easy to convey to him, a man much older than she was, that the world was her world, too. He had taken a risk when he invited her to join him at his table. After all, she came with a whole life and libido of her own. It had not occurred to him that she might not consider herself to be the minor character and him the major character. In this sense, she had unsettled a boundary, collapsed a social hierarchy, broken with the usual rules. ~ Deborah Levy

I confess that I am often lost in all the dimensions of time, that the past sometimes feels nearer than the present and I often fear the future has already happened. ~ Deborah Levy

We did not yet entirely understand that Mother, as imagined and politicized by the Societal System, was a delusion. The world loved the delusion more than it loved the mother. ~ Deborah Levy

We are East & West looting each other. ~ Deborah Levy

To unfold any number of ideas through all the dimensions of time is the great adventure of the writing life. But I had nowhere to write. ~ Deborah Levy

I am not okay. Not at all and haven't been for some time. I did not tell her how discouraged I felt and that I was ashamed I was not more resilient and all the rest of it which included wanting a bigger life but that so far I had not been bold enough to make a bid for things I wanted to happen and I feared it was written in the stars that I might end up with a reduced life like hers... ~ Deborah Levy

No wonder women told him their thoughts like they told no other man. Rabah admired their bodies and laughed at their jokes. He looked like what he was a desired and much loved man with light in his eyes and money in the bank. But he also hurt women. I have seen them weep over Rabah because he removed his affection and attention and the light in his eyes shone on someone else. How was it that he could love me one day and not love me the next? What do you do with the love you feel if it is not returned? ~ Deborah Levy

Anything covered is always interesting. There is never nothing beneath something that is covered. ~ Deborah Levy

As Simone de Beauvoir had told us, women are not supposed to eclipse men in a world in which success and power are marked out for them. It is not easy to take up the historic privilege of dominance over women... if he is economically dependent on her talents. At the same time, she receives the fatal message that she must conceal her talents and abilities in order to be loved by him. ~ Deborah Levy

It would take a while for me not to think of the Greek language as the father who walked out on me ~ Deborah Levy

To be forceful was not the same as being powerful and to be gentle was not the same as being fragile ... ~ Deborah Levy

He lifted his arm that had been resting on her shoulders and gazed at the words she had written on his hand. He had been branded as cattle are branded to show whom they belong to. The cold mountain air stung his lips. She was driving too fast on this road that had once been a forest. Early humans had lived in it. They studied fire and the movement of the sun. They read the clouds and the moon and tried to understand the human mind His father had tried to melt him into a Polish forest when he was five years old. He knew he must leave no trace or trail of his existence because he must never find his way home. That was what his father had told him. You cannot come home. This was not something possible to know but he had to know it all the same ~ Deborah Levy

Be sure to enjoy language, experiment with ways of talking, be exuberant even when you don't feel like it because language can make your world a better place to live. ~ Deborah Levy

My problem is that I want to smoke the cigar and for someone else to light it. I want to blow out smoke. Like a volcano. Like a monster. I want to fume. I do not want to be the girl whose job it is to wail in a high-pitched voice at funerals. ~ Deborah Levy

It smelt of coconut ice cream and sweat and the Mediterranean sea. I ~ Deborah Levy

We're kissing in the rain.' Her voice was hard and soft at the same time. Like the velvet armchairs. Like the black rain inked on his hand. ~ Deborah Levy

Next year he would suggest they hire a chalet on the edge of an icy fjord in Norway, as far away from the Jacobs family as possible. ~ Deborah Levy

My love for my mother is like an axe. It cuts very deep. ~ Deborah Levy

A passion for learning ... isn't something you have to inspire with; it's something you have to keep from extinguishing. ~ Deborah Meier

All of my conjuring had led only to ruin and death. Now I was a wounded witch, waiting in the forest, undone. ~ Ariel Levy

I look up at the ceiling, at all the hardcover fiction. So very few people want it. It is operating as insulation rather than stock. The argument rages on about whether it is better to have books or ebooks, but while everyone gets heated about the choices, the hardcover fiction molders quietly away. ~ Deborah Meyler

There has never been an unexpectedly short debugging period in the history of computers. ~ Steven Levy

Witch's spell or not, he would take her, possess her- own her. It wasn't his intent when he kissed her. Fires of damnation! He never planned to kiss the wench! It just...happened. ~ Deborah Macgillivray

It is both an honour and a privilege to be asked to lead NBC News. The power of the brand, the scale of the legacy, the depth of the talent all make this organisation truly great. ~ Deborah Turness

You must value something highly to go to war to improve it ~ Deborah Laake

Secrets are unreliable allies. they allow us to believe we are safr, yet all the while they are destroying us. ~ Deborah Harkness

For a while, it was as poisonous and wrenching as it had been since the day it happened, as intolerable: a crime against nature. Then the grief went back to sleep in my body. ~ Ariel Levy

I am a great believer in having the power to end your life and knowing that, in extremis, you can. But I would not want to involve anybody else in my actions if it could imperil them. ~ Deborah Moggach

As the mother of the ten-month-old hospitalized in San Diego said, if people want to make that choice, they should go live on an island with its own schools and doctors: "their own little infectious disease island. ~ Deborah Blum

Still, you need him as much as you need the air you breathe, and he wants you as he's wanted nothing and no one since I made him. So it is done, and we will make the best of it. ~ Deborah Harkness

Later, they began to explore the secret idea that Deborah shared with all the ill - that she had infinitely more power than the ordinary person and was at the same time also his inferior. ~ Joanne Greenberg

No, I'm a vampire." Matthew stepped forward, joining Chris under the projector's light. "And before you ask, I can go outside during the day and my hair won't catch fire in the sunlight. I'm Catholic and have a crucifix. When I sleep, which is not often, I prefer a bed to a coffin. If you try to stake me, the wood will likely splinter before it enters my skin." He bared his teeth. "No fangs either. And one last thing: I do not, nor have I ever, sparkled." Matthew's face darkened to emphasize the point. I ~ Deborah Harkness

I actually failed my first license test. I got an automatic fail. I guess I had been doing well but she had to pull the emergency brake so obviously there was a problem. I remember them handing me my fail paper and me just bursting into tears. ~ Jane Levy

Man's body was designed to function best with high blood and cellular levels of vitamin C - synthesised as needed by the liver. Due to an inborn error of metabolism, the vast majority of us no longer have the ability to make it, but that does not lessen our need for vitamin C or the benefits derived form it. ~ Thomas E. Levy

Her arms reached up to wrap around his neck, holding on as if she would never let go. She kissed him back with an ardor that astonished, gratified, and aroused him all at once, and for a moment, he lost himself in the kiss, and in the woman, thinking to himself, now this, this is magic. ~ Deborah Blake

The truth is that you are innately good, wise, and powerful. You were created in and for good. ~ Deborah Day

Somewhere in the center of my soul, a rusty chain began to unwind. It freed itself, link by link, from where it had rested, unobserved, waiting for him. My hands, which had been balled up and pressed against his chest, unfurled with it. The chain continued to drop, to an unfathomable depth where there was nothing but darkness and Matthew. At last it snapped to its full length, anchoring me to a vampire. Despite the manuscript, despite the fact that my hands contained enough voltage to run a microwave, and despite the photograph, as long as I was connected to him, I was safe. ~ Deborah Harkness

Do the Thing that Makes your Heart Sing ~ Deborah Jane Sutton

I never have suspected or sensed a whiff of cheating in any of our Super Bowls. ~ Marv Levy

Happy people look young. You're really afraid of getting older, aren't you? You should only be afraid of getting less happy. ~ Deborah Smith

A line in the sand can become a rut. A rut can become a ditch, and a ditch can be worn down into a pit. There's not much difference between a pit and a grave. ~ Deborah Epperson

Sol in Scorpio

When the sun is in signe of Scorpio, expect death, feare, and poison.
During this dangerous time, beware of serpents and all other venomous creatures.
Scorpio rules over conception and childbirth, and children born under this signe are blessed with many gifts. ~ Deborah Harkness

The king just sits there, moving one square at a time. The queen can move so freely. I suppose I'd rather lose the game than forfeit her freedom. ~ Deborah Harkness

Just like the butterfly, I too will awaken in my own time. ~ Deborah Chaskin

When I read Deborah Brenner's book 'Women of the Vine' about women wine makers, I was impressed that many of the women she had interviewed had come to wine making later in life as a second career. ~ Rebecca Pidgeon

My opinion is that music is music. As long as you approach doing a remix with truth, I don't see the dance remixes being any different than an hip-hop remix- it's really a different version of the song. ~ Deborah Cox

I would sooner want a strong partnership with the United States - even with (US President George W.) Bush, who I think is the worst president in a long, long time. I would sooner want a friendship with Bush than with (Russian President Vladimir) Putin. ~ Bernard-Henri Levy

Do we understand each other?' 'Yes.' 'I'm so glad.' Baldwin's mouth lifted into a smile. 'Answer your e-mail while you're at it. I send you messages. You don't answer. It's aggravating.' I nodded, afraid that if I opened my mouth, detailed instructions on just what he could do with his e-mail might pop out. Baldwin ~ Deborah Harkness

Ideas ... [are] like babies - everything about their environment [says] they shouldn't exist. But they do. You can't dwell on problems too early, or they will swamp the virtues and you will decide not to do the project.
(Attributed to Mike Jones) ~ Steven Levy

For most women, the language of conversation is primarily a language of rapport: a way of establishing connections and negotiating relationships. ~ Deborah Tannen

We're working on disrupting an old family tradition." He accepted the glass the Justice offered.
"He means feud," Shelby explained at her mother's blank look. She sipped the liqueur,approved it, then sat on the arm of Myra's chair.
"Oh...Oh," Deborah repeated as she remembered. "The Campbells and the MacGregors were blood enemies in Scotland-though I can't quite remember why."
"They stole our land," Alan put in mildly.
"That's what you say." Shelby shot him a look as she sipped again. "We acquired MacGregor land through a royal decree.They weren't good sports about it."
Alan gave her a thoughtful smile. "I'd be interested to hear you debate that issue with my father."
"What a match," Myra said, brightening at the thought. "Herbert,can you just see our Shelby nose-to-nose with Daniel? All that red hair and stubbornness. You really should arrange it, Alan."
"I've been giving it some thought."
"Have you?" Shelby's brows lifted to disappear completely under her frizz of bangs.
"Quite a bit of thought," he said in the same even tone.
"I've been to that wonderful anachronism in Hyannis Port." Myra gave Shelby a brief pat on the thigh. "It's right up your alley,dear.She's so fond of the-well,let's say unique,shall we?"
"Yes." Deborah sent Shelby a fond smile. "I could never figure out why. But then,both of my children have always been a mystery.Perhaps it's because they're so bright and clever and restless.I'm always hoping they ~ Nora Roberts

A real friend sees past the trouble and into your heart. ~ Deborah Wiles

I thought she liked you now. I've seen her kiss you and she says your name the special way she says Rina's and mine - like it tastes good. ~ Deborah Hale