Harriet Lane > Quotes

“I know the names of the books - their old covers bleached to palest greens or pinks by the endless cycle of summers - lined up on the shelf.”
― Harriet Lane, Alys, Always

“I turn my back and look out to sea, the sun so low and molten that my eyes fill with tears, and yet I can feel it: a cooler wind is coming in, the edge of evening approaching. Dusk is gathering along the coast, in the coves and quaysides and marinas, where in an hour or so the long strings of coloured bulbs will twinkle and sway; and then it will pass over us-like a visitation: a plague or a blessing....”
― Harriet Lane, Her

“Maybe it's not really lying if you barely know you're doing it. It should be true. It's the way it should be, in an ideal world.”
― Harriet Lane, Alys, Always

“Emma is the engine of this home, the person who propels it forward, keeps everyone fed and clothed and healthy and happy—and yet she’s entirely alone within it, and getting lonelier with every item ticked off her checklist. This is what it comes down to: the flat-out invisible drudgery of family maintenance, the vanishing of personality as everyone else’s accrues.”
― Harriet Lane, Her

“I've thought about the pictures often; what they show or, more accurately, don't show. Remembering what was happening elsewhere: in the distance, or behind the camera, off to one side.”
― Harriet Lane, Her

“The moment just before I go to sleep is often the highlight of my day: the letting go, the sense of becoming unreachable.”
― Harriet Lane, Her

“I found the final plot twist unsatisfying, as plot twists often are: nothing like life, which - it seems to me - turns less on shocks or theatrics than on the small quiet moments, misunderstandings, or disappointments, the things that it's easy to overlook.”
― Harriet Lane, Her

“Later, we stand on the pavement outside Marcy's for a few moments, saying our goodbyes, moving aside as people weave in and out of the heavy doors leaving little incomplete jokes hanging in the air behind them like smoke. I glance in the window, into the room which is full of a buttery low light pricked out with candles and silverware, and see the waiter clearing our table, whisking away the wine glasses and the coffee cups, the plate of petit fours, and lowering on a new white cloth with easy dramatic precision. A couple approaches, fresh from an opening night or a concert; the waiter adjusts a knife and swings to greet them. A swift reinvention, the final movement of someone else's evening.”
― Harriet Lane, Her

“Over time, I’ve come to see that so much of a personality boils down to confidence: whether you have it, or not.”
― Harriet Lane, Her

“At the edge, I start to imagine the thing that isn't being directly looked at, the vague presence of something: a house, a wall, a hedgerow. Your eyes will slip beyond this, into the bleached air, but you should know it's there, and eventually your attention will come back to it. That's how I want it to work, anyway.”
― Harriet Lane, Her

“The air still feels damp after the quick flurry of rain, but there's a sense that we're on the cusp of a new season, that something's about to change. The sun's a little higher in the sky than it was this time yesterday. If you half-close your eyes, a promise of green is just starting to declare itself, quite tentatively, on the trees.”
― Harriet Lane, Her: A Novel

“The house fills with the particular atmosphere that accompanies peacefully sleeping children: a rich narcotic silence that creeps down the stairs and twines itself around the table legs.”
― Harriet Lane

“I don't say that I've read it and enjoyed it, though I found the final plot twist unsatisfying, as plot twists often are: nothing like life, which - it seems to me - turns less on shocks and theatrics than on the small quiet moments, misunderstandings or disappointments, the things that it's easy to overlook.”
― Harriet Lane, Her

“She understood it was an opportunity, one of those rare moments when you get a chance to do something bold and risky. When you’re young, these moments happen all the time – weekly, daily – and you assume they’re part of life; but over time they become intermittent, and eventually they peter out altogether. Then you see them happening to your children.”
― Harriet Lane, Other People's Fun

“After a while, the rhythm of his breath slackens and deepens, and he rolls away, towards the ghostly hands of his alarm clock.”
― Harriet Lane, Her

“Emma is the engine of this home, the person who propels it forward, keeps everyone fed and clothed and healthy and happy—and yet she’s entirely alone within it, and getting lonelier with every item ticked off her checklist. This is what it comes down to: the flat-out invisible drudgery of family maintenance, the vanishing of personality as everyone else’s accrues. You never asked for this, did you, Emma? You didn’t know it would be quite like this.”
― Harriet Lane, Her

“I'm already someone else, but the person I turn into at these low points is someone I never imagined I could be a few years ago: someone with a hot knot of fury where her heart used to be.”
― Harriet Lane, Her

“Little by little, the city falls away, like something giving up...”
― Harriet Lane, Her

“I turn my face to the window as the train starts to move. Charles suggested I take the car, but I prefer this strange elevated route out of town, the rooftop tour of south London as the carriages rattle between spires and old smokestacks and the tips of poplars; the sudden glimpses into school playgrounds and street markets and quiet litter-strewn alleys, narrow avenues of blackened brick. Little by little the city falls away, like something giving up, and then the acoustics of the carriage change, and we're out in the open: meadows riven with streams, the fast blue shadows of clouds on the hills.”
― Harriet Lane, Her

“I look. I can’t stop looking. Are they spilling over with guile, or entirely lacking it? I am never sure. There they are, ceaselessly insisting on the fact of their existence, imagining someone might give a fuck… I do give a fuck, of course; but the wrong sort, not the kind they expect to solicit. Too bad. Beggars can’t be choosers. No, I never post. I lurk. I am the audience, transfixed, eyes shining in the darkness. After all, if someone wants to be seen, someone else must watch. These people with their brunches and sunsets: they are nothing without me. That’s the way it works.”
― Harriet Lane, Other People's Fun

“...she's incapacitated by motherhood, like a Victorian morality print:...”
― Harriet Lane, Her

“All this talk about “finding yourself”; often, other people show you yourself first.”
― Harriet Lane, Her

“I once heard someone on the radio saying that a bee is never more than forty minutes away from starving to death, and this fact has stayed with me because it seems to have a certain personal resonance. My children are in a perpetual proximity to catastrophe: concussion, dehydration, drowning or sunstroke. Keeping them safe requires constant vigilance.

I've turned into one of those mothers, full of terror.”
― Harriet Lane, Her