Claire Fuller > Quotes

“Writing does not exist unless there is someone to read it, and each reader will take something different from a novel, from a chapter, from a line.”
― Claire Fuller, Swimming Lessons

“My father was fond of saying 'If you own too many possessions sooner or later they start owning you.”
― Claire Fuller, Our Endless Numbered Days

“Dates only make us aware of how numbered our days are, how much closer to death we are for each one we cross off. From now on, Punzel, we're going to live by the sun and the seasons.' He picked me up and spun me around, laughing.'Our days will be endless.”
― Claire Fuller, Our Endless Numbered Days

“It’s about believing two opposing ideas in your head at the same time: hope and grief.”
― Claire Fuller, Swimming Lessons

“It’s difficult to live with both hope and grief.”
― Claire Fuller, Swimming Lessons

“Flora would have liked to ask her parents why the words ‘to father’ have such a different meaning from the words ‘to mother’.”
― Claire Fuller, Swimming Lessons

“Beautiful on the surface, but look a little closer and everything is decaying, rotting, falling apart.”
― Claire Fuller, Bitter Orange: A Novel

“Fiction is about readers. Without readers there is no point in books, and therefore they are as important as the author, perhaps more important.”
― Claire Fuller, Swimming Lessons

“I learned from the wig-men that the law is not about finding the truth, it is about who can tell the most convincing story. It is a game that must be grasped swiftly if you want to win, even if to everyone else it looks as though you have lost.”
― Claire Fuller, Bitter Orange

“But the world is a nicer place when you think everyone is telling the truth. There are no agendas, no hidden motives; no one lies for dramatic effect.”
― Claire Fuller, Bitter Orange: A Novel

“May your bones be washed by the saltwater, your spirit return to the sand and the love we have for you be forever around us.”
― Claire Fuller, Swimming Lessons

“In the middle, the river was a deep green, scattered with rocks poking their noses up for a breath. The water charged around them, creating eddies and whirlpools. Closer to the bank, the current dragged lengths of weed along with it so it seemed that long-haired women swam just under the surface, never coming up for air.”
― Claire Fuller, Our Endless Numbered Days

“The house had always been full of books, far too many for one person to get through in a lifetime. Her father didn't collect them to read, to own first editions or to keep those signed by the author; Gil collected them for the handwritten marginalia and doodles that marked the pages, for the forgotten ephemera used as bookmarks. Every time Flora came home he would show her his new discoveries: left-behind photographs, postcards and letters, bail slips, receipts, handwritten recipes and drawings, valentines and tickets, sympathy cards, excuse notes to teachers; bits of paper with which he could piece together other people's lives, other people who had read the same books he held and who had marked their place.”
― Claire Fuller, Swimming Lessons

“It's the worst kind of person who goes back on a promise, even one they made to themselves.”
― Claire Fuller, Our Endless Numbered Days

“Her story would have been simply memory and imagination without me to hear it; undiscovered and unaired, like a book without a reader. My second role was from the wings: the prompter.”
― Claire Fuller, Bitter Orange: A Novel

“The all-seeing eye. What has it seen? Nothing as interesting as the things I saw through the judas hole at Lyntons. But of course, the difference is privacy. The other women will complain and shout about being looked at without warning. But I think it is better to know when someone is watching rather than to live your life under an invisible gaze.”
― Claire Fuller, Bitter Orange

“Now I am a woman of bone and skin, the patches of pigmentation like a map of a rocky archipelago; I am obdurate and uncooperative, drifting on a sea of memory between islands of lucidity.”
― Claire Fuller, Bitter Orange: A Novel

“A book becomes a living thing only when it interacts with a reader.”
― Claire Fuller, Swimming Lessons

“like a photograph album flicked through by a distant relative, oohing and aahing at the happy times without knowing about the hundreds of pictures that had been discarded.”
― Claire Fuller, Swimming Lessons

“Who wouldn’t want to rewrite their past, if it means it will change their future?”
― Claire Fuller, Bitter Orange: A Novel

“and all books are created by the reader.”
― Claire Fuller, Swimming Lessons

“Everyone needs a place to escape to, even if it’s only inside their head.”
― Claire Fuller, Swimming Lessons

“Flora is like a car, she wants everything on her terms. If I’d asked her to come with me for a swim, she’d probably have said no. Occasionally she’ll allow me to stroke and pet her, but if I put out an uninvited hand she’ll often scratch and claw, and run away.”
― Claire fuller, Swimming Lessons

“Gil collected them for the handwritten marginalia and doodles that marked the pages, for the forgotten ephemera used as bookmarks.”
― Claire Fuller, Swimming Lessons

“it occurred to me that it was a type of control; Cara could be generous when it suited her, or not, when it didn’t.”
― Claire Fuller, Bitter Orange: A Novel

“If food is worth eating, it's worth eating properly”
― Claire Fuller, Bitter Orange

“Humans are useless at learning from their mistakes. We just have to keep making new plans.”
― Claire Fuller, The Memory of Animals

“Yours have passed away too?” I asked her. She shrugged and said, “Peter still has both of his, squirrelled away in Devon or Dorset.” Her voice was low, whispering a secret. “I think he’s embarrassed by them —their cheeks are too ruddy, or they look too much like their dogs.” I stared at her, shocked, until she laughed and I realised she was joking.”
― Claire Fuller, Bitter Orange: A Novel

“Best let hidden things remain hidden, I should have said. Sleeping dogs and all that. If I was then the woman I am now I would have shouted and stood between the sledgehammer and the door that day, when Peter opened the Museum.”
― Claire Fuller, Bitter Orange

“Writing does not exist unless there is someone to read it, and each reader will take something different from a novel, a chapter, from a line. A book becomes a living thing only when it interacts with a reader.”
― Claire Fuller, Swimming Lessons