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61 " I divide my life into two parts. Not really a Before and After, more as if they are bookends, holding together flaccid years of empty musings, years of late adolescent or the twentysomething whose coat of adulthood simply does not fit. "
― Sarah Winman , When God Was a Rabbit
62 " We love who we love, don’t we? "
― Sarah Winman , Tin Man
63 " Think about it, I said. We all had to come out of the dark to sing. "
64 " And sometimes, when the day loomed grey, I'd sit at my desk and remember the heat of that summer. I’d remember the smells of tuberose that were carried by the wind, and the smell of octopus cooking on stinking griddles. I’d remember the sound of our laughter and the sound of a doughnut seller, and I’d remember the red canvas shoes I lost in the sea, and the taste of pastis and the taste of his skin, and a sky so blue it would defy anything else to be blue again. And I’d remember my love for a man that almost made everything possible. "
65 " No amount of self-sufficiency could dispel the craving he still felt for that person we no longer talked about; that person who'd taken him apart and left a piece missing that none of us could find. "
66 " We were solitary and apart. Slept during the day, uncurled at dusk like evening primroses; fragrant and lush. We never wanted to conquer the world, only our fears. We didn't keep in touch. Somewhere, though, our memories had. "
67 " You had to translate his actions, for they were seldom accompanied by words, because his world was a quiet world; a disconnected, factured space; a puzzle that made him phone me at 3am, asking me for the last piece of the border, so he could fill in the sky. "
68 " But it was my humanness that led me to seek, that's all. Led us all to seek. A simple need to belong somewhere. "
69 " Everyone had a story of grief. Everyone else's was worse than yours. "
70 " I’m broken by my need for others. By the erotic dance of memory that pounces when loneliness falls. "
71 " There are moments in life, so monumental and still, that the memory can never be retrieved without a catch to the throat or an interruption to the beat of the heart. Can never be retrieved without the rumbling disquiet of how close that moment came to not having happened at all. "
― Sarah Winman , Still Life
72 " And from that moment, I watched her. Watched her with different coloured eyes, until the raging energy that coursed through my body finally revealed itself and gave itself a name: envy. For I knew already that something had taken me from me, and had replaced itself with a desperate longing for a time before; a time before fear, a time before shame. And now that knowledge had a voice, and it was a voice that rose from the depths of my years and howled into the night sky like a wounded animal longing for home. "
73 " ..How the numbness in my fingertips travelled to my heart and I never even knew it.I had crushes, I had lovers, I had orgasms. My trilogy of desire, I liked to call it, but I'd no great love after him, not really. Love and sex became separated by a wide river and one the ferryman refused to cross. "
74 " I thought that probably I was worth more when I was younger. "
75 " I just want my friend back, I have become forgettable "
76 " Beautiful art opens our eyes to the beauty of the world, Ulysses. It repositions our sight and judgement. Captures forever that which is fleeting. "
77 " No single act of generosity remains in isolation. The ripples are many. "
78 " Autumn knocks on the window. I pull back the sliding doors and let it in. Lights from the meat market flicker and car lights streak the gloom. Overhead the pulse of aeroplane wings replaces the stars. The flat is quiet. This is loneliness. "
79 " And my father went back into the forest and chopped down a tree. The sound of the trunk fracturing and splintering and falling to earth was the sound his heart would have made, could it speak. "
80 " Tree said, Thanks for everything. It’s been nice knowing you. You too, said Cress. Will you be OK? I’m a tree. I’ve done this a thousand times before. Done what? Goodbyes. Really? Think about it. Leaves "