Home > Author > Evie Wyld
1 " I feel the pull of being alone, of answering to no one, the safety of being unknown and far away. "
― Evie Wyld , All the Birds, Singing
2 " I'm out of knives for the time being "
3 " I laugh out loud at how wonderful life is that it takes a hell of a knock like that and it’s just fine, and I find the steadiness in myself... "
4 " It is just like my mother to tell me about a ghost in the house in which I am staying, alone, and then to tell me that there’s absolutely nothing to worry about. That is exactly her game. "
― Evie Wyld , The Bass Rock
5 " I trust a man who golfs less than a man who pays for sex. "
6 " My mother has found being alone a new beginning. Her house is tidy. She eats what she wants, when she wants: nothing for a day and then a dressed crab at eleven at night, or a bowl of frozen peas, uncooked, which she eats like peanuts for breakfast. I admire the singleness that she has embraced since Dad died. I think I could aspire to that, but without having to be widowed first. Sometimes, though, it would be nice to fuck and to be fucked. "
7 " Not having a husband to look after is quite the most intelligent thing your sister has ever done,’ she says of me, to Katherine. ‘And quite the most exciting thing you’ve done for yourself in a very long time.’ We both stand in silence waiting for the subject to be done with. Sometimes she can sound a little relieved to be widowed. "
8 " These things happened in every girl’s life at some point, of course – with Ruth it had been the curate, and he had only wrestled a fondle and a wet mouth out of her. But the hope was always that one’s parents were oblivious and remained that way. "
9 " Benign, indifferent and essential, she passed through his life, and left an open hole in her wake. "
― Evie Wyld , Everything Is Teeth
10 " I do not fucking taste like peaches...I taste of soil and salt and the mutherfucking ocean. The fucking depths of the darkest parts of the ocean with the oil slicks and the scaled fish and the mutherfucking sea scorpions. That's what I taste of. And sometimes, beetroot. "
11 " Do you ever scare yourself? Do you ever look at yourself in the mirror for such a long time that you start to see something else? Like there's someone else under the skin. Have you ever looked in the mirror and deliberately made an ugly face, bared your teeth, growled and snarled and become suddenly aware that there is something else inside of you that you're not letting out? Like we're the wolves and that's why we're hunted? "
12 " If I were a woman, I would give men a wide berth. I've always rather fancied the idea of being a lesbian." He says it wistfully as though he had simply taken the wrong career path. "
13 " Something more than disgust wells up in me. Something else, disappointment run through with nails. "
14 " The wedding had been a situation they did not want to repeat, Elspeth’s mother Judith sobbing openly during the vows, Ruth’s own mother with not a shred of sympathy – she had lost her only son after all, which was surely worse than losing a daughter "
15 " At four in the morning I am tired enough to sleep. I have not drunk an appalling amount, and that is something. It’s not a good feeling turning out the lights and leaving the kitchen; the rest of the house gapes about me. I slide into bed, remembering once I’m in that I haven’t brushed my teeth. I let myself off that particular chore. I switch off the light and, though the room is in absolute darkness, I get out of bed again and turn the bear to face the wall, because it stops me from sleeping. "
16 " Darling Puss. Darling Puss, men just are, that’s the truth of it. They are made differently, they want different things. And in order to be able to enjoy your life there are certain things that one has to accept. It’s not being deluded, I won’t have that – it’s seeing things for what they really are, and buggering on until eventually the penny drops and you find yourself living a very fruitful life partly with them but partly with yourself. And the great thing is, they almost always die first. "
17 " Tell me something,’ she said to them or to the dove or to the trees – she wasn’t sure – ‘tell me what to do next. "
18 " Maggie is trancelike. ‘What would it take?’ she says. ‘What if all the women that have been killed by men through history were visible to us, all at once? If we could see them lying there. What if you could "
19 " Maggie is trancelike. ‘What would it take?’ she says. ‘What if all the women that have been killed by men through history were visible to us, all at once? If we could see them lying there. What if you could project a hologram of the bodies in the places they were killed? "
20 " it’s just a feeling I have all the time that I’m walking in and out of these deaths and I should at least notice. I should notice because I’m not dead yet, and there’s no difference between these women and me, or you or your mother or the lady in the tea shop. We’re just breezing in and out of the death zone. Wading through the dead. "
