Amy Liptrot > Quotes

“In grandiose moments, high on fresh air and freedom on the hill, I study my personal geology.

My body is a continent. Forces are at work in the night. A bruxist, I grind my teeth in my sleep, like tectonic plates. When I blink the sun flickers, my breath pushes the clouds across the sky and the waves roll into the shore in time with my beating heart. Lightning strikes every time I sneeze, and when I orgasm, there's an earthquake. The islands' headlands rise above the sea, like my limbs in the bathtub, my freckles are famous landmarks and my tears rivers. My lovers are tectonic plates and stone cathedrals.”
― Amy Liptrot, The Outrun

“I’ve swapped disco lights for celestial lights but I’m still surrounded by dancers. I am orbited by sixty-seven moons.”
― Amy Liptrot, The Outrun

“I'm filling the void with new knowledge and moments of beauty. The dangerous thoughts will happen - and while I'm experiencing them I feel like that's the way I will feel for ever - but I just have to let the cravings pass lightly.”
― Amy Liptrot, The Outrun

“My life was rough and windy and tangled. Growing up in the wind leaves you strong, sloped and adept at seeking shelter.”
― Amy Liptrot, The Outrun

“I am finding new priorities and pleasures for my free time. I’ve known this was possible but it takes a while for emotions to catch up with intellect.”
― Amy Liptrot, The Outrun

“When you’ve had sadness, it will cast a shadow long after things are better.”
― Amy Liptrot, The Instant

“I long for him to know I’m doing better but I won’t be truly better until I no longer want him to know.”
― Amy Liptrot, The Outrun

“And then, in my hand, I hold my phone containing the whole internet: all of my friends, the entirety of Wikipedia. The internet is always offering an elsewhere. I spend my days being distracted, attention pulled from this to that. I’m doing well to get anything done at all. Which world do I choose to enter?”
― Amy Liptrot, The Instant

“I have twenty tabs open, each an endless journey, an unfinished thought. I can’t go to sleep yet: there are too many tabs open in my brain.”
― Amy Liptrot, The Outrun

“I stopped drinking to do things, rather than to spend my time talking about stopping drinking”
― Amy Liptrot, The Outrun

“I needed to get away. I wanted an adult life, restaurants, sexiness, conversation and art. I wanted to meet new people who didn’t know old things about me.”
― Amy Liptrot, The Instant

“I want to make connections and to communicate because we are only and really alive right now. I still want to experience the extremes so I must find ways to fulfil this need sober. I must be brave. I wonder if I can still be cheeky or flirtatious without booze. If I master this, I could be unstoppable. In the past months I’ve been stifled by bruised confidence and anxiety, but these things take time. I’m gradually learning to say things sober that other people wait to say drunk.”
― Amy Liptrot, The Outrun

“People like to tell me I’m looking ‘well’ but there are late hours alone when my heart is an open wound and I wonder if the pain will ever stop brimming fresh.”
― Amy Liptrot, The Outrun

“I want something to take the edge off. But I’m realising that times of anxiety are necessary and unavoidable and, in any case, I like the edge: it’s where I get my best ideas. The edge is where I’m from. It’s my home.”
― Amy Liptrot, The Outrun

“Rain on me. Strike me with fire. I feel like lightning in slow motion. I am one fathom deep and contain the unknown. I am vibrating at a frequency invisible to man and I'm ready to be brave.”
― Amy Liptrot, The Outrun

“Hearts and futures can turn on a single afternoon or an accepted invitation - but more often lead to nothing but themselves.”
― Amy Liptrot, The Instant

“Drinking solves nothing. Afterwards, the problems are still there.”
― Amy Liptrot, The Outrun

“Asking for a friendship is hard. Hearts and futures can turn on a single afternoon or an accepted invitation - but more often lead to nothing but themselves.”
― Amy Liptrot, The Instant

“I've found lately that when people message me, perhaps suggesting meeting up, or in a potentially romantic situation, they drop personal pronouns - it's all 'Be in touch?' or 'Wanna meet up?' rather than 'Would you like to meet up with me?' - never implicating themselves, or making firm plans, always suggesting they have somewhere else or better to be. We like to give the impression that things don't mean that much and we're not taking risks.”
― Amy Liptrot, The Instant

“Things didn't go according to plan. I never found a raccoon. But I came to realise I was never entitled to a certain life, a certain person. I made it all up in my head. And what I have to do now is make up a new story, be brave and strong enough to imagine a different path.”
― Amy Liptrot, The Instant

“The last breeding great auk in Britain was shot in 1813 on Papay, ordered by a collector in London. In the nineties, Papay schoolkids performed a play about the bird: Raiders of the Last”
― Amy Liptrot, The Outrun

“Energy never expires. The energy of waves, carried across the ocean, changes into noise and heat and vibrations that are absorbed into the land and passed through the generations.”
― Amy Liptrot, The Outrun

“He told me that would be the last time and afterwards, using Sellotape, I collected his chest hairs, which had gathered in the sweat in my navel, and stuck them in the pages of my diary.”
― Amy Liptrot, The Outrun

“We can never catch a moment in time. We have to surrender to the instant, open to experience it as it happens with no expectation of permanence.”
― Amy Liptrot, The Instant

“I am free-falling but grabbing these things as I plunge. Maybe this is what happens. I've given up drugs, don't believe in God and love has gone wrong, so now I find my happiness and flight in the world around me.”
― Amy Liptrot, The Outrun

“Short-term weather forecasting is best done by looking out of the window”
― Amy Liptrot, The Outrun

“I wanted to come back to a city because I'm not done yet. I want another throw of the dice.”
― Amy Liptrot, The Instant

“I think about how the moon is getting further away from the Earth and although this is only happening at about 3.78 centimeters per year, or the same speed at which our fingernails grow, it seems terribly sad.”
― Amy Liptrot, The Outrun

“Most people know how it feels to be online with an aching heart.”
― Amy Liptrot, The Instant

“When I am experiencing the impulse to drink, I try to examine it further, that false promise. I am experiencing discomfort and want something to provide flow and easiness. I want something to take the edge off. But I'm realising that times of anxiety are necessary and unavoidable, and, in any case, I like the edge: it's where I get my best ideas. The edge is where I'm from. It's my home.”
― Amy Liptrot, The Outrun