Fiona Wood > Quotes

“We look at each other with shy relief. It's the look two odd socks give when they recognise each other in the wild.”
― Fiona Wood, Six Impossible Things

“Stress level: extreme. It's like she was a jar with the lid screwed on too tight, and inside the jar were pickles, angry pickles, and they were fermenting, and about to explode.”
― Fiona Wood, Six Impossible Things

“Something large and happy has unfolded in my chest, erupting in a smile that won’t quit. I can’t remember ever feeling so light-hearted. Or is my heart full? Or bursting? Not aching, that’s for sure.”
― Fiona Wood, Six Impossible Things

“My problems are like waves - just as one disappears with a snarl and a hiss there’s another shaping up to knock me down.”
― Fiona Wood, Six Impossible Things

“Never listen to fools who dis Jane Eyre as being a story about a girl who gets her mean man. This is a character who gets what she wants and lives on her own terms by having moral fortitude, intelligence, courage, imagination and a will of iron. And that is one hell of a checklist. Imagine Charlotte Brontë writing this book in 1847. What a powerful story for women living at that time!”
― Fiona Wood, Cloudwish

“There's this sky I know”
― Fiona Wood, Six Impossible Things

“... you cow,' Estelle added. 'I heard that.' 'Give the woman the geriatric audiology medal,' Estelle said. 'I heard that, too', her mother said, from the other side of the door.”
― Fiona Wood, Six Impossible Things

“REVISITING THE LIST
1. Kiss Estelle
Okay, at least I've met her. She thinks I'm a creep. And that's withought her knowing I've read her diaries. Unless we somehow fall over, exactly aligned, lip to lip, and gravity causes the pressure, or we find ourselves in a darkened room and through a series of Shakespearian ID muddles she thinks she's kissing someone else, I can't say how this is ever going to happen.”
― Fiona Wood, Six Impossible Things

“Guys, please, one life-changing shock at a time, I felt like saying.”
― Fiona Wood, Six Impossible Things

“Vân Uoc decided that she too would get to know the book inside out. And something miraculous happened when they were about a quarter of the way through reading it. After weeks of ploughing and hesitating, something clicked; she stopped stumbling over the unknown words and long sentences. Words magically started to reveal meaning, most of the time anyway, through context. And the sentences themselves stopped being obstacles and started telling a story. Her eyes were racing ahead; she was comprehending the shape and rhythm of the language.”
― Fiona Wood, Cloudwish

“It’s the look two odd socks give when they recognise each other in the wild.”
― Fiona Wood, Six Impossible Things

“Van Uoc felt the stab of a sad truth: she and her mother would never be as close as her mother and grandmother had been.
Her mother got up, stretched her tidy, graceful frame and headed for the kitchen. Van Uoc wanted to be able to offer her some comfort, but what could she say? Her mother was right. The two of them represented an irreconcilable cultural split. Distance between them was inevitable.”
― Fiona Wood, Cloudwish

“Mothers are generally starvers or feeders”
― Fiona Wood, Wildlife

“As usual, I don't know which way is north, but I know the direction of beauty.”
― Fiona Wood, Take Three Girls

“Fred is staying with his mother these holidays. She's living in London for six months, in Chelsea, studying Georgian underwear at the National Art Library. It's a thesis, not a fetish.”
― Fiona Wood, Six Impossible Things

“My heart is its own fierce country where no one else is welcome.”
― Fiona Wood, Wildlife

“She stood behind her mother's chair and brushed her hair gently for about five minutes, drawing the brush smoothly from forehead to nape, over and over, in the way her mother liked. It was the only sustained physical contact she seemed to enjoy. Her usual mode of a kiss good-bye, for instance, was the kiss-and-push-you-on-your-way. She wasn't a snuggler. No surprise, really, that this acceptable affection came via a prickly implement.”
― Fiona Wood, Cloudwish

“There's nothing more satisfying than being stupid with a friend.”
― Fiona Wood, Six Impossible Things

“Almost the entire world relies on other people's opinions to tell them what to think.”
― Fiona Wood, Take Three Girls

“It makes me feel tired about how guarded we are the whole time. Without even trying we're ready to make a joke of everything, serving up the day with big dollops of irony and derision and cynicism. As if. Sucked in. Kidding.”
― Fiona Wood

“I don't think I fully appreciated how relaxing it is having someone I can be really mean to. It's going to be so hard being nice all the time.”
― Fiona Wood

“She'd always been comforted by how many words there were in the English language -- more than a million. With so many words surely anything could be said, everything could be understood.
But what did the volume of words matter in any language when she couldn't even manage to ask the simplest questions? Will you tell me your story? Will you let me in to my own family? Isn't it my story, too?”
― Fiona Wood, Cloudwish

“I'm floating. The absence of pain is powerful.”
― Fiona Wood, Wildlife

“You cracked up. You were looking at me and laughing.
And I said, What? And you said, I love you.
And we were both completely shocked. Because it was a little premature, surely.
And you said it again, as though you were checking the flavor, and it tasted perfectly right. You said it again, softly, I love you; you were looking right into my heart. You said it again, almost shouting. And you were laughing and it was as though you were so happy you couldn't believe that someone had given you this good thing.
And it was partly that, and it was partly because you were thinking you'd had a premature decision, whereas guys your age were more generally associated with premature ejaculation. As well as inability to speak girl and commitment problems to anything other than games with buttons.
And the best part was when you said, You love me, too. And all I had to do was nod. Because it was true.”
― Fiona Wood

“... consider the meaning of these images. Every time you're working with them, ask yourself: what do they mean? And, even more important, what do they mean to me? The more specific and personal something is, the more its universality emerges.”
― Fiona Wood, Cloudwish

“How disconcerting it was to have an idle fantasy turn into real life attraction.”
― Fiona Wood, Cloudwish

“What would Jane do?”
― Fiona Wood, Cloudwish

“How many times do your feet have to press down on a path before they make an imprint, before pieces of soul start sticking?”
― Fiona Wood, Cloudwish

“Vân Uoc decided that she too would get to know the book inside out. And something miraculous happened when they were about a quarter of the way through reading it. After weeks of ploughing and hesitating, something clicked; she stopped stumbling over the unknown words and long sentences. Words magically started to reveal meaning, most of the time anyway, through context. And the sentences themselves stopped being obstacles and started telling a story. Her eyes were racing ahead; she was comprehending the shape and rhythm of the language.”
― Fiona Wood

“There's this sky I like.”
― Fiona Wood, Six Impossible Things