A.K. Blakemore > Quotes

“Just like a man to suggest the most obvious thing in the world as though it might be revelation to a woman’s cottony mind. When it seems to me all the most obvious things in the world must be done by women, or else they wouldn’t get done.”
― A.K. Blakemore, The Manningtree Witches

“I am lost on a sea of hunger, blue and black and heaving and full five fathoms deep below and rarely, rarely do I feel anything besides hungry, rarely, rarely does a jolt of feeling or emotion pierce the hide of my hunger, and never, never have I been able to live the life God presumably gave me to live, to dance and think and remember and kiss, no, all my life I have stood at the threshold of my life waiting to be let in”
― A.K. Blakemore, The Glutton

“Really ‘freedom’ means ‘money’, and if anyone tells you otherwise it’s a good bet they’ve plenty of both already.”
― A.K. Blakemore, The Manningtree Witches

“He wants to say: hunger is all I am and all my life is. Hunger runs through my veins like blood, branches through me like a fungus, swelling and renewing itself daily. I am lost on a sea of hunger, blue and black and heaving and full five fathoms deep below and rarely, rarely do I feel anything besides /hungry/, rarely, rarely does a jolt of feeling or emotion pierce the hide of my hunger, and never, never have I been able to live the life God presumably gave me to live, to dance and think and remember and kiss, no, all my life I have stood at the threshold of my life waiting to be let in because of this hunger, no living for Tarare.”
― A.K. Blakemore, The Glutton

“bodies laid out, poor and broken, living and dead. Strange, she thinks, perhaps even perverse, that we are denied the measure of ourselves that we may take of others.”
― A.K. Blakemore, The Glutton

“And women hate widows all the more because they are just a rumbling scaffold at the shipyard or a storm on the channel or a bullet from a hedgerow away from being one themselves.”
― A.K. Blakemore, The Manningtree Witches

“And that is it, poverty. A life slowly narrowing around you like the trick walls of a tomb. You have things and then the things fall to pieces, and then it begins to empty your body out as well, and your mind. No dreams, just hunger. A hole whose edges begin to fray, become undone.”
― A.K. Blakemore, The Manningtree Witches

“a moth with mouths both front and back. Cavorting in the autumn clouds that are like strips of flayed skin. The”
― A.K. Blakemore, The Manningtree Witches

“A man like Hopkins, or like that dolt Richard Miller, will pray every day that God might strike his rivals down, or that a pretty young thing might look his way. And should it happen, he counts it a miracle, a marvel—proof of his standing among the righteous. All a supposed witch does, it seems to me, is everyone the courtesy of saying those prayers out loud, and in company.”
― A.K. Blakemore, The Manningtree Witches

“precondition of true beauty is surprise, he thinks: real beauty must seem as though it has fallen abruptly from the sky, or else come from deep inside the earth—some place where it had shone secretly and unseen, until you came along and saw it.”
― A.K. Blakemore, The Glutton

“(Seldom have those dark trees heard laughter before. They will discuss it at length in the months to come.)”
― A.K. Blakemore, The Glutton

“Who would claim the luxury of a big heart, or the bijou of a smile, when he is raised on a diet of boiled grass and stale bread? He should rightly be miserable, think those who despise him, like I am.”
― A.K. Blakemore, The Glutton

“Because of time and all it has torn down and robbed from him. The gilt rubbed from the surface of the world. Because of time and all it has borne away, beyond his reach.”
― A.K. Blakemore, The Glutton

“More than anything in the world I would have him see me, and know me. But if he saw me and knew me truly, he would despise me, despise what it is I hold inside me. I wonder if this is what all women eventually come to know - a choice each comes to make between obscuring her true self in exchange for the false regard of a good man, or allowing herself the freedom to be as she truly is and settling for a brute who couldn't care less if she is as broken, as coarse, as hopeless as he.”
― A.K. Blakemore, The Manningtree Witches

“Really “freedom” means “money,” and if anyone tells you otherwise it’s a good bet they’ve plenty of both already.”
― A.K. Blakemore, The Manningtree Witches

“Just like a man to suggest the most obvious thing in the world as though it might be revelation to a woman's cottony mind. When it seems to me all the most obvious things in the world must be done by women, or else they wouldn't get done.”
― A.K. Blakemore, The Manningtree Witches

“England where Christian men sell other Christian men to other Christian men.”
― A.K. Blakemore, The Manningtree Witches

“I wish freely to embrace the deliciousness of sin.To sin with abandon is, after all, the only prerogative of the damned.”
― A.K. Blakemore, The Manningtree Witches

“How simple, the life of beasts, who were not made in the image of God. What they see and want, they move to take, happy as can be.”
― A.K. Blakemore, The Manningtree Witches

“The will of God . . .” He trails off. Even he is tired of the will of God, that everyman’s sop. We cannot all know it. We cannot all have it. We cannot continue to pluck the limbs off one another until we finally decide who does.”
― A.K. Blakemore, The Manningtree Witches

“OF COURSE, FLEEING SEEMS THE WISEST THING to do, once you no longer can.”
― A.K. Blakemore, The Manningtree Witches

“Then the witches come. They land one by one and throw off their cloaks, their naked bodies silvered by moonlight. Some are young, some old, some fair, some dark, some fat, some thin, all beautiful, all horrible.”
― A.K. Blakemore, The Manningtree Witches

“Your Mother Superior sounds like a cunt, says the killer.”
― A.K. Blakemore, The Glutton

“I am Tarare, he says. The Great Tarare. The Glutton of Lyon. The Hercules of the Gullet. The Bottomless Man. The Beast. So I have been called, he says.”
― A.K. Blakemore, The Glutton

“And that is it, poverty. A life slowly narrowing around you like the trick walls of a tomb. You have things and then the things fall into pieces, and then it begins to empty your body out as well, and your mind. No dreams, just hunger. A hole whose edges begin to fray, become undone.”
― A.K. Blakemore, The Manningtree Witches

“My imps need no doors, sir, They go where I tell them. Through any crack, be it as narrow as a nun's or wide as your wife's.”
― A.K. Blakemore, The Manningtree Witches

“I know cowards, and I know men. And there's many say once you know the former you know the latter just as well.”
― A.K. Blakemore, The Manningtree Witches

“I wish freely to embrace the deliciousness of sin. To sin with abandon is, after all, the only prerogative of the damned.”
― A.K. Blakemore, The Manningtree Witches

“Or else my understanding of other things and other places comes through the smell and look of her, and that is what it is to have a mother.”
― A.K. Blakemore, The Manningtree Witches

“God—the Devil. How is a silly woman who signs her name with a cross meant to tell the difference, their methods being so alike?”
― A.K. Blakemore, The Manningtree Witches