Penelope Mortimer > Quotes

“I began drinking because the thought that I was drinking gave me a kind of identity: each time I poured myself a brandy in the deserted afternoon I could say to myself 'I am a woman who drinks.”
― Penelope Mortimer, The Pumpkin Eater

“I don't know who I am, I don't know what I'm like, how can I know what I want? I only know that whether I'm good or bad, whether I'm a bitch or not, whether I'm strong or weak or contemptible or a bloody martyr - I mean whether I'm fat or thin, tall or short, because I don't know - I want to be happy.”
― Penelope Mortimer, The Pumpkin Eater

“I want to fly from a window and pour through the air like a wind of love to raise his hair and slide into the palms of his hands.”
― Penelope Mortimer, The Pumpkin Eater

“I have tried to be honest with you, although I suppose that you would really have been more interested in my not being honest. Some of these things happened, and some were dreams. They were all true, as I understood truth. They are all real, as I understood reality.”
― Penelope Mortimer, The Pumpkin Eater

“When I was fourteen I had the world at my feet but somebody didn't do their job properly and allowed me to sin.”
― Penelope Mortimer, The Pumpkin Eater

“I was worrying about the milk, about my children falling in love, about the creatures who crawled through the dark towards us, their ancestors, their loving assassins, breathing 'Why?' like a cold wind.”
― Penelope Mortimer, The Pumpkin Eater

“But it is arrogance that keeps one alive: the belief that one can choose, that one' choice is important, that one is responsible only to oneself. Without arrogance what would we be?”
― Penelope Mortimer, The Pumpkin Eater

“He had already incapacitated me, harried me, cut away most of my illusions and some of my ignorance; he had already so weakened me that I was falling back on myths, words, mysteries to replace what I had lost.”
― Penelope Mortimer, The Pumpkin Eater

“I was alone with myself, and we watched each other with steady, cold, inward eyes: the past and its consequence, the reality and its insubordinate dream.”
― Penelope Mortimer, The Pumpkin Eater

“When we were young, we said the hell with it and used our breasts as shields. But the tears fall so easy when they take away love.”
― Penelope Mortimer

“For one’s past grows to a point where it is longer than one’s future, and then it can become too great a burden.”
― Penelope Mortimer, The Pumpkin Eater

“Can't you see? Before you knew the truth, we were happy. What's the god in ferreting out the truth all that time? It's always unpleasant."

"Is it only lies that are Pleasant?"

"Usually. That's why people tell them. To make life bearable.”
― Penelope Mortimer

“A woman may have a son of fifty, bald, paunchy, with a roll of fat at the back of his neck and hands that sweat like putty; or a daughter, old, the arthritic legs and dripping nose blurting out failure, a grey bag of wasted muscles and gangling bones. Bone of your bones; curious flesh of your flesh. Not a hair, not a fingernail, not a particle of skin is the same as it was at the moment of birth, but still the aging body that was once a child is part of you. You may not understand a word it says, may be baffled or gratified or hostile; the physical substance of the child is still, though changed beyond recognition, your own.”
― Penelope Mortimer

“She got up from the armchair, into which she had plumped with horror, and started to bustle about the room. Jane often bustled about the room, suddenly remembering to stir her life, as though it were kept simmering on a low flame. When this was done, with nothing apparently achieved, she came back and sat by the fire, her arms clasped round her knees.”
― Penelope Mortimer

“The long, painful, frustrating summer was over: the summer of wet socks, of plimsolls fossilised by salt and sand; the summer of Wellington boots and Monopoly, bicycles left out in the rain and the steady, pungent smell of bubble gum; the summer of inadequacy. It had begun with strawberries pried out like jewels from under the wet leaves and covering of straw; it had ended with bitter quarrels over who should shred the runner beans, hard and brown as old leather. And now it was over. The children, the summer, gone.”
― Penelope Mortimer, Daddy's Gone A-Hunting

“En los sueños no se necesitan paracaídas ni alas: en los sueños puedes volar.”
― Penelope Mortimer, The Pumpkin Eater

“I told him that my father was dead and that to take her mind off it I had told my mother that I was pregnant. I said it had taken her mind off it wonderfully, so far; and that it also happened to be true.”
― Penelope Mortimer, The Pumpkin Eater

“No se aprende nada lastimando a los demás; solo aprendes cuando te lastiman a ti.”
― Penelope Mortimer, The Pumpkin Eater

“Mrs. Bennet was fertilizing her roses. (...) She did think that, probably more than most people, they had souls. If she had been asked what she meant by a soul she would have dismissed the question as though soul were as much an ingredient of life as salt or cinnamon or baking powder.(...) The smell of her oses when she buried her nose in them was soul.”
― Penelope Mortimer, The Home

“It was always summer and always strawberries for tea, there was always someone who loved you for what you were, not for what you ought to be”
― Penelope Mortimer, The Pumpkin Eater.

“The world might split open like a cracked apple, death be expected, prepared for. Moons might ride the sky and love, doomed, struggle to grow in impossible places. Baby would still lisp the cute remark, refuse spinach, need unobtainable gaiters. Listening, Ruth felt drawn into a cult, a society, in which adult people were no longer required to stand alone, but where supported by their children. How can we move, think, breathe, they groaned, when impeded by these living crutches? But without them, life would be too dangerous; an emptiness in which, the most fearful thing of all, there would be no time, no landmarks.”
― Penelope Mortimer, Daddy's Gone A-Hunting

“The first stage of the nightmare is losing the ability to believe in insignificance. Consciousness is sharpened to a point in which nothing is trivial but every moment, every detail, has the same unbearable quality of dread. In this condition of despair there are no crises. The merciful censor of memory has broken down and everything is recalled with equal horror, the broken nail becomes a jagged pointer to the senselessness of living, the most commonplace remark releases, without warning, the grief or terror of a lifetime. But still the days pile up, one on top of the other, in an orderly fashion; the weeks are marked by a red Sunday and the months have names. It is necessary to eat and sleep. It is necessary to prepare for the future, even if this is only done by drawing in breaths so that it may, in a moment, be exhaled and breathed again. The moral judgement delivered on this state of unhappiness is as severe as that pronounced on the lunatics of Bedlam. Lost, it says with smug disgust, all sense of proportion. Which is exactly true.”
― Penelope Mortimer, Daddy's Gone A-Hunting

“Querida señora Evans, por Dios, venga a enseñarme cómo vivir. No es que lo haya olvidado; es que nunca he sabido. Un útero no es tan importante. Es sólo la cuna de la vida, algo que tira de la luna como si fuera un cometa y hace que el mar suba y baje, suba y baje, la respiración del mundo.”
― Penelope Mortimer, The Pumpkin Eater

“His cold, already ageless eyes held Ruth's for a moment. She recognized them as the eyes of a man who felt nothing. Posturing for other people, for the countless mirrors, he would assume attitudes of outrage, love, friendship, even physical need. He would probably go through his entire life imagining that he was real; but not one person would owe him gratitude, remember his comfort. At the moment, still so young, he didn't even know what he was meant to be feeling. The attitude was uncertain, but the intention was clear: I shall never do anything for anyone, because I don't believe anyone except myself exists. There was shaking it, no changing it. It was useless to try.”
― Penelope Mortimer, Daddy's Gone A-Hunting

“I have arguments with myself.'
'About what?'
'Between the part of me that believes in things, and the part that doesn't.'
'And which wins?'
'Sometimes one. Sometimes the other.”
― Penelope Mortimer, The Pumpkin Eater

“Angels sleeps in her cell, her room which should be gay with cushions or theatre programmes or comic pottery, but isn't. The distant clocks have been chiming and ringing all night to pass the time. She lies on her stomach, to hide or protect time, one arm hanging over the edge of the bed, her head wrenched sideways.
Everything about her now is unformed. Her intelligence has stopped working. She is herself and, as she flounders, flies, sinks from one dream to another, unrecognizable.
What does myself look like? I mean, who am I?
You are an examination result, dear. Perhaps, in time, a scholarship. Perhaps an Honors Degree. Try harder.
But myself - I mean myself?
Perhaps you could find yourself in the Guides, or in the New Testament somewhere. If not, we can provide various substitutes, such as Joan of Arc, Florence Nightingale, Nurse Cavell. It's really none of our business, but we do keep a few heroines handy, just in case.
But how shall I deal with myself? What shall I do with myself all my life?
You may look in the answer book. You must control yourself, discipline yourself, sacrifice yourself, respect yourself. If necessary you may defend yourself and able yourself, and to have confidence in yourself while effacing yourself is not entirely bad. You must never, however, love yourself or pity yourself, praise yourself or allow yourself to have either will or opinion. Never indulge yourself, never be conscious of yourself, never forget yourself and above all, never be centered in yourself. We hope this is understood?
But if there is no one else to love, pity or praise? If no one else is conscious of me, remembers me, if I am no one's centre?
That, dear, is what God is for. As Our Lord says, "Are not five sparrows sold for two farthings and not one of them is forgotten before God?" To forget yourself in one sense is desirable, whereas, as we have said, to forget yourself in another sense is not. Now if we rewrite those subjoined sentences, strengthening them by omission of caveats, trite quotations, indirect assertions and vulgarisms everything, we feel certain, will seem a great deal clearer; or, alternatively, more clear.
She twists her head, hitting the mattress with a vague, feeble gesture. "But I'll never get there," she says, stating a proved fact. "I'll never get there."
The clocks repeat themselves. She turns on her back and, still asleep, rubs her stomach with the unhappy, worried expression of a child who has eaten a sour apple.”
― Penelope Mortimer