Flynn Berry > Quotes

“The state uses political violence every day, they only call it terrorism when the poor use it.”
― Flynn Berry, Northern Spy

“can’t move ahead of him, and I don’t need to, either. He practiced how to crawl and to walk on his own. My job, it seems, is to follow him, without any hesitation or regret.”
― Flynn Berry, Northern Spy

“I recently read a scientific paper that said that murder victims, before they die, are flooded with serotonin, oxytocin, hormones that create a sense of euphoria as the body tries to protect itself from the knowledge of what’s happening.”
― Flynn Berry, Northern Spy

“I don't know how to survive the hours until I can sleep.”
― Flynn Berry, Under the Harrow

“On top of the courthouse is a statue of a blindfolded woman holding a sword and a pair of scales. The blindfold makes her look like she is about to be executed.”
― Flynn Berry, Under the Harrow

“The baby’s needs fill the rooms like water.”
― Flynn Berry, Northern Spy

“He stares back at me, amused, and I think the disguise hasn't convinced him, but he probably does this to all women--journalists, prosecutors, judges--a stripping-down, an assessment. Their reserve and competence don't fool him. He knows what they're like. He knows what they look and sound like when they're scared.”
― Flynn Berry, Under the Harrow

“Some people are more unacceptable as victims than others.”
― Flynn Berry, Northern Spy

“It’s not exactly, or not entirely, that I want to stay at home with Finn all day. It’s more that I want to feel, with him, as acute and competent as I do at work, and at work, as receptive and absorbed as I do with him.”
― Flynn Berry, Northern Spy

“Where would a violent man go, where would a monster go. It was hard to know what someone who liked hurting women would also like.”
― Flynn Berry, Under the Harrow

“Lavery’s.”
― Flynn Berry, Northern Spy

“The dog raised his paw in silhouette, like a dog from the unicorn tapestries, with the embroidered woods behind him. I remember thinking that this isn’t the newest moment in history but the oldest, that time isn’t thinning but thickening.”
― Flynn Berry, Under the Harrow

“He said he’d decided to think of the attack as he would, say, a bicycle accident. What would my life have been like if I’d made that decision.”
― Flynn Berry, A Double Life

“only person watching them. She’d noticed that before with Colin. At large dinners, people a few seats down would stop eating and lean over to listen to him. Colin left James, and a moment later he appeared beside her with a bottle of wine and glasses for her and her father. He kissed Faye, checked his watch, and said, “When can we ask them all to leave?” “Well,” said Deborah, once the guests were gone. “That was a success.” She had arranged for them to borrow her friend’s house in Provence for their honeymoon. “Actually,” Faye had said, “we’re going to India.” And on their honeymoon a week later, in a coracle spinning on a river in Hampi, Faye gripped the straw edges of the boat and she laughed and laughed and laughed. — AFTER THEY WERE MARRIED, my parents often went on trips abroad with his friends, to rented villas in France, Sardinia, Mallorca. I visited the one in Mallorca when I was twenty-two, after saving for months to buy the ticket. I went in September, when the villa where they’d stayed was empty. A sign for a security system was posted”
― Flynn Berry, A Double Life

“I don't answer. I don't run or start screaming, because doing either would be like giving a signal for it to start. And because part of me is expectant, like I'm about to learn the answer to a question.”
― Flynn Berry, A Double Life

“and”
― Flynn Berry, Northern Spy

“Belfast confetti,”
― Flynn Berry, Northern Spy

“different from Marian, like one of us must have betrayed the other for our circumstances to have diverged so much.”
― Flynn Berry, Northern Spy

“I started to think about what I needed to do to grow up into that sort of person, the sort of person who runs to help.”
― Flynn Berry, A Double Life

“There's a relief in knowing the truth-- a completion, a block finally dropping into place -- but I'm also so stricken it hurts to breathe, and weeping, my face hot, my hands clutching my stomach. I'd thought there might still be a way out of this. A notch in the circle through which all of us, even him, could escape.”
― Flynn Berry, A Double Life

“Faulty equipment is the cause of one-fourth of all deaths in hospital. Never,”
― Flynn Berry, Under the Harrow

“At least then the clock is moving in the right direction, toward a reunion instead of a separation.”
― Flynn Berry, Trust Her

“But there was never another version of him. I understand that now. He didn’t have a double life. No one does, there’s only ever one.”
― Flynn Berry, A Double Life

“recipe calls for six sweet, firm apples, like Honeycrisp, Pippin, or Northern Spy. I stop short, suddenly self-conscious, like someone is at the window, watching my reaction to those two words.”
― Flynn Berry, Northern Spy

“Those six months of maternity leave were dense, elemental. Returning to work, I felt like Rip Van Winkle, like I’d woken after decades, except no one else had aged. Nothing at the office has changed, and I have to act like I haven’t either. If I seem distracted or tired, slower than before, my bosses might decide that someone without a baby, or at least not a single mother, would manage the job better. So I pretend to be well rested and focused, despite sleeping in four-hour increments at night, despite several times a day missing Finn so much it hurts to breathe. In”
― Flynn Berry, Northern Spy

“These people have quite a lot of power,” he says. “The least they can do is explain themselves.”
― Flynn Berry, Northern Spy

“It was good to be so scared. The ocean was very large, as was the universe. Which contained the ocean. And the oceans on other planets, and other planets. The fear made the domestic rituals better. The almond croissant, the detective novel, the outdoor shower. Here I am, I thought, taking an outdoor shower in the universe. While we were here, I wanted to stay forever, but I was also already thinking of leaving. Always biding and always going, always at the exact same time.”
― Flynn Berry, Under the Harrow

“single-lane swimming pool under their house,”
― Flynn Berry, Northern Spy

“will be difficult for her to adopt while Northern Ireland is a conflict zone.”
― Flynn Berry, Northern Spy

“I remember thinking that this isn’t the newest moment in history but the oldest, that time isn’t thinning but thickening.”
― Flynn Berry, Under the Harrow