Home > Work > Burial Rites

Burial Rites QUOTES

Burial Rites QUOTES

1 " Poverty scrapes these homes down until they all look the same, and they all have in common the absence of things that ought to be there. I might as well have been at one place all my life. "

― Hannah Kent , Burial Rites

2 " Endless days of dark indoors and hateful glances are enough to set a rime on anyone’s bones. "

― Hannah Kent , Burial Rites

3 " I prefer a story to a prayer. "

― Hannah Kent , Burial Rites

4 " Together they listed the people they had known who had died on the mountains. A bleak conversation to have, thought Margrét, but there was some comfort in talking about death aloud, as though in naming things, you could prevent them from happening. "

― Hannah Kent , Burial Rites

5 " People speak of the fear of the blank canvas as though it is a temporary hesitation, a trembling moment of self-doubt. For me it was more like being abducted from my bed by a clown, thrust into a circus arena with a wicker chair, and told to tame a pissed-off lion in front of an expectant crowd. "

― Hannah Kent , Burial Rites

6 " It was not hard to believe a beautiful woman capable of murder, Margret thought.As it says in the sagas, Opt er flago i fogru skinni. A witch often has fair skin. "

― Hannah Kent , Burial Rites

7 " I was worst to the one I loved best. "

― Hannah Kent , Burial Rites

8 " Blíndur er bóklaus ma∂ur. Blind is a man without a book. "

― Hannah Kent , Burial Rites

9 " Sometimes, people never stood a chance in the beginning. Or they might have made a mistake. When people start saying things like she must be a bad mother because of that mistake." .... "It's not fair. People claim to know you through the things you've done and not by sitting down and listening to you speak for yourself. "

― Hannah Kent , Burial Rites

10 " To know what a person has done, and to know who a person is, are very different things. "

― Hannah Kent , Burial Rites

11 " I can turn to that day as though it were a page in a book. It’s written so deeply upon my mind I can almost taste the ink. "

― Hannah Kent , Burial Rites

12 " It’s not fair. People claim to know you through the things you’ve done, and not by sitting down and listening to you speak for yourself. "

― Hannah Kent , Burial Rites

13 " Any woman knows that a thread, once woven, is fixed in place; the only way to smooth a mistake is to let it all unravel. "

― Hannah Kent , Burial Rites

14 " They will see the whore, the madwoman, the murderess, the female dripping blood into the grass and laughing with her mouth choked with dirt. They will say “Agnes” and see the spider, the witch caught in the webbing of her own fateful weaving. They might see the lamb circled by ravens, bleating for a lost mother. But they will not see me. I will not be there. "

― Hannah Kent , Burial Rites

15 " I don't want to be remembered, I want to be here! "

― Hannah Kent , Burial Rites

16 " The treachery of a friend is worse than that of a foe. "

― Hannah Kent , Burial Rites

17 " They see I’ve got a head on my shoulders, and believe a thinking woman cannot be trusted. "

― Hannah Kent , Burial Rites

18 " Memories shift like loose snow in a wind, or are a chorale of ghosts all talking over one another. There is only ever a sense that what is real to me is not real to others, and to share a memory with someone is to risk sullying my belief in what has truly happened. "

― Hannah Kent , Burial Rites

19 " I cannot think of what it was not to love him. To look at him and realise I had found what I had not known I was hungering for. A hunger so deep, so capable of driving me into the night, that it terrified me. "

― Hannah Kent , Burial Rites

20 " I remain quiet. I am determined to close myself to the world, to tighten my heart and hold what has not yet been stolen from me. I cannot let myself slip away. I will hold what I am inside, and keep my hands tight around all the things I have seen and heard, and felt. "

― Hannah Kent , Burial Rites