Home > Author > Glenn Haybittle
101 " She is accustomed to studying faces. Usually what she seeks in them is inspiration. Today she looks for signs of malice and treachery. "
― Glenn Haybittle , The Way Back to Florence
102 " The death beams slide around the sky like dancers on ice. As if exchanging partners in this vaulted ballroom of coloured smoke. He imagines a Strauss waltz accompanying the dance of the Nazi searchlights. "
103 " Life cannot be experienced deeply without kindness, just as life cannot be experienced deeply without art. "
― Glenn Haybittle , The War in Venice
104 " Memory is both the best and cruellest friend we will ever have. "
105 " A mask can be expedient when it's a mask you know you're wearing and can take off at will, but masks which are worn habitually cannot be removed without tearing off some of your real face. "
― Glenn Haybittle , Scorched Earth
106 " My mother later blamed the Cold War and the threat of nuclear extinction for all her shortcomings as a mother. She said the state of fear she lived in during that period froze over all other feelings. That was the explanation for her aversion to touching me or even being emotionally present when I needed reassurance. I didn't accept it as a valid excuse at the time, but now I'm older I understand better the crippling consequences of mental health issues. "
107 " Up ahead are a forest of searchlights. A thicket of long thin smoking beams pivoting back and forth. Stabbing at the darkness. Making of the sky a kind of dome as though V Victor is about to enter some supernatural cathedral of light. "
108 " When he thinks of his wife now it is like walking barefoot down steps to the sea at night. A secretive act. A moment of wonder he treats with caution as though shielding a buffeted flame. "
109 " The trouble with painting though, with all art, is you can’t prove you’re better. It’s not like a hundred-yard sprint where there’s a piece of technology to indisputably grade the contestants. Artists, like criminals, are dependent on a jury. "
110 " The moon seems to shine back at her the increased need of intimacy, of secrecy and seclusion the war has made everyone feel. "
111 " Every time he is unable to answer one of her questions he feels another theft of strength from his limbs. "
112 " I’m an artist,” she says. It always costs her an effort to make this statement. As if she is handing over a false identity card. "
113 " Strange, she thinks, how vulnerable the back of your neck feels when you listen to silence. "
114 " He knows if he kills this man he will see his face every night before he goes to sleep. That his face will become more vivid to him than his own face. If he kills the man he will be forced to wear this man’s face for the rest of his life. "
115 " There are no parks in the ghetto; barely any trees. She misses the smell of the refreshed earth, the flickering green light beneath overhanging foliage, the flight of birds over water. She misses the distinctive individual timbre of each of Warsaw’s church bells. She misses walking home at night through the fragrance of tree pollen and the laughter of lovers. Only books now enable her to experience many of the blessings of the natural world she loves but has never until now fully appreciated. She lives wholeheartedly inside every novel she reads. "
― Glenn Haybittle , In the Warsaw Ghetto
116 " Agreements have to be made in the dark for them to be binding. "
― Glenn Haybittle , The Memory Tree
117 " The less bravely we live the more stifling becomes our fear of death. "
118 " Landscapes of fields and small clusters of buildings hurtle past outside like fragments of songs never sung in their entirety. "
119 " Sometimes at night the only sound was the syncopated footfalls of a Nazi patrol stiffly marching past in their nailed boots. It was like the noise of a pitiless machine. The sound of those unseen boots created an abyss in the atmosphere that you felt yourself falling into. You can’t imagine how sinister it seemed that they marched in step like that when there was no one around to see them. They didn’t seem like human beings, more like programmed automatons. "
― Glenn Haybittle , The Tree House
120 " Florence exists to educate our memory. "