Tor Udall > Quotes

“Tearing the paper means you've stopped believing in the infinite possibilities of a square.”
― Tor Udall, A Thousand Paper Birds

“Nothing is set in stone. A bird can be refolded into a boat, a fish, a kimono, or any other extravagant vision. At other times it aches to return to its original folds. The paper begins to fray. It tires, rebels.”
― Tor Udall, A Thousand Paper Birds

“Among the dog leads, phones and hats, there would be babies hoped for and lost. All this would be remembered: missed opportunities, mislaid friends, the smile of a wife. It would be a place for lost things.”
― Tor Udall, A Thousand Paper Birds

“The last page of a book is a sacred space that even lovers respect.”
― Tor Udall, A Thousand Paper Birds

“A master of origami said he tried to express with paper the joy of life, and the last thought before a man dies.”
― Tor Udall, A Thousand Paper Birds

“It is a movement and a rest, you and I.”
― Tor Udall, A Thousand Paper Birds

“She mourns the stillbirth of anything that craves to be born. It doesn't have to be a child. It can be an artwork, an idea, or a miscarried love.”
― Tor Udall, A Thousand Paper Birds

“Stand in nature before anyone else has woken and most people find something to believe in.”
― Tor Udall, A Thousand Paper Birds

“It doesn't matter where she looks, there are always the beautiful imperfections of a marriage.”
― Tor Udall, A Thousand Paper Birds

“Perhaps she thought she would see a tunnel of light or an angelic choir. But the only thing she saw was every kiss she had ever experienced – and she realised she was where she wanted to be all along.”
― Tor Udall, A Thousand Paper Birds

“Then he thinks that there should be a place in every town where people could put rescued or found things. Not just objects, but snippets of forgotten languages, or misused time – an hour that can never be lived again. It would be a place where lost faiths could be collected, as well as keys, gloves and love letters never sent. Here you could find extinct animals and old wives’ tales vanished in history; a whole shelf of unfinished songs, discontinued books, deleted texts. It would be a safe for fleeting emotions – the first flush of love, or a particular scent on a sunny day that is never savoured again. Among the dog leads, phones and hats, there would be babies hoped for and lost. All this would be remembered: missed opportunities, mislaid friends, the smile of a wife. It would be a place for lost things.”
― Tor Udall, A Thousand Paper Birds

“Loving you is like learning a foreign language.”
― Tor Udall, A Thousand Paper Birds

“I don't want to return to the world outside these Gardens. All I want is to notice the dew on a leaf. The holy busyness of worms in the soil.”
― Tor Udall, A Thousand Paper Birds

“Everyone needs company, some kind of consolation. This is the rough comfort of strangers, the sympathy of touch.”
― Tor Udall, A Thousand Paper Birds

“He looked like a painting in restoration - that at some point in his life he had been beautiful.”
― Tor Udall, A Thousand Paper Birds

“Chloe takes a mental snapshot, as if one day she will paint him. It will be a day's work getting to know his body.”
― Tor Udall, A Thousand Paper Birds

“They talked in the supermarket, the butcher's and the post office of how they had watched a child collecting twigs, or was it flowers...? How they had noticed the sky, what a blue sky there was that day. Chloe remembers her walking through the trees, the branches growing bigger until she couldn't see her any more. A child had been lost and Kew would never be the same.”
― Tor Udall, A Thousand Paper Birds

“She can't believe she is going to compose her first love letter. She can hardly bear the exposure as if her body is a photographic film spooling into sunlight and everything is too bright, too vulnerable, the moments in the film now lost for ever.”
― Tor Udall, A Thousand Paper Birds