Gwendoline Riley > Quotes

“He lies down next to me.
He says, 'You know - you have a face to die for/'
'Well, don't die,' I say, "we just met.”
― Gwendoline Riley, Sick Notes

“Writing to you like this is the same as saying your name when I've woken up late, feeling sick, tasting rot. It's pointless, but it happens.”
― Gwendoline Riley

“I don't think it ever ocurred to me to aim for happyness, though. I mean, do you do that? No, just try to get trough with as little pain as possible, that's the way ...”
― Gwendoline Riley, Opposed Positions

“I thought that whoever she really was wasn't who she was living as.”
― Gwendoline Riley

“She was learning something important: how to live within the sound of her own slow breathing, how to love the view when her eyes were shut.”
― Gwendoline Riley

“Certainly I remember feeling that it was his dream world, his symbol world, that we were dragged into during those first arguments, and it frightened me, being given--as I saw it--the part of a training dummy, outfitted in colours, slogans, that I could not see.”
― Gwendoline Riley, First Love

“It's all about vanity, isn't it? I think it says something about people if they can't do it”
― Gwendoline Riley

“He stared at me for a couple of seconds, then picked up his cutlery, hunched over his plate. Outside, behind him, the wind carried the rain, the lamp posts quivered. I found myself thinking of certain people I knew--people not that far away--how surprised they'd be (wouldn't they?) to see me sitting there with that bright, bland expression on my face, trying to fence with this nonsense. Or had I been very naive? Was this what life was like, really, and everyone knew it but me?”
― Gwendoline Riley, First Love

“Very intimate but very separate at the same time'. That's my credo for friendship.”
― Gwendoline Riley

“Finding out what you already know. Repeatingly. That's not sane, is it? And while he might have said that this was how he was, for me it continued to be frightening, panic-making, to hear the low, pleading sounds I'd started making, whenever he was sharp with me. This wasn't how I spoke. (Except it was.) This wasn't me, this crawling, cautious creature. (Except it was.)... none of this was personal.”
― Gwendoline Riley, First Love

“I think they're being cheap with their lives, that's why. So they seem ravenous for the worst thoughts I can have.”
― Gwendoline Riley

“If only i could get that under control then i feel like i could stay here a long time, watching the days leaking into the nights, swilling over the buildings, bleeding back again.

I could lie and not think of anything but ways to describe the sky, the clouds, the light.”
― Gwendoline Riley

“I was an only child. My parents were both smart, but they were flighty, and they loved each other so much, more than they ever loved me. I had to do a lot for myself, from a young age. It wasn't great. Now I feel like my childhood is with me every day. Being alone. Being shut out. Some people, maybe they had a terrible time, maybe a great time, but it isn't with them. I feel like it's always with me. I'm never not there. Do you know what I mean? I mean - how about you?”
― Gwendoline Riley, Sick Notes

“He says,'Why is it love, Esther? Why call it that?'

'Because. Why is what you do art? Because you say so.”
― Gwendoline Riley

“... And I'd remember who I could chat to, and go back to them the next week, for some chat and some friendliness. That's what you do in life, isn't it?

At Marble Arch, we said goodbye. I stood and watched him go, head down, rushing. Oxford Street was so crowded. Edwyn hunched his shoulders, braced, dodged, and soon enough he disappeared.”
― Gwendoline Riley, First Love

“I’m very glad my mother left my father, of course, but as I got older it did get harder to valorize that flight. This cover-seeking – desperate, adrenalized – had constituted her whole life as far as I could see. In avoidance of any reflection, thought. In which case her leaving him was a result of the same impulse that had had her hook up with him in the first place. Not to think, not to connect: marry an insane bully. Simper at him. Not to be killed: get away from him. And her children? Her issue? How did they fit into her scheme? As sandbags? Decoys? Perhaps I should be more moved by her than I am. I love animals, their natural ways. I have asked her about my – our – childhood, that house, but you wouldn’t think I’d spoken. She just stared back at me. Maybe she never noticed what we grew up with. Left to herself, back there, as I’m sure she felt she was, she laced the fetid air with her high-pitched humming, her little self-announcements: ‘Well, I’m going to sit in the sun lounge if anyone wants me. Do they? No.’ ‘Well, I’m going to eat some strawberries and cream and watch Wimbledon. Yes.’ My brother was even more incensed by these notices than I. ‘Do I give a shit? ’ he’d scream. You couldn’t see the television if the curtains were open, so they never were open. She’d clear a space on the settee and hold up by her chest her bowl of mushy frozen strawberries, topped with spray cream. She lifted her chin, bared her teeth. I tried to lie there with her once, when I was small. She didn’t like it, I could tell, but I didn’t get down. Ski Sunday, was she watching? Or a Grand Prix? I took a chance, made another move: I held her clenched bare foot and kissed it.”
― Gwendoline Riley, First Love

“What they prefer to that is to find someone to have power over; someone to own and to bully, to smash and to waste. She wondered if she would ever be in love.”
― Gwendoline Riley

“It's true about the running water. You can hear anything you want to in it.”
― Gwendoline Riley

“Daba igual que pusiera aquello en oídos de todo el mundo; era inexacto y deshonesto. Quisiese lo que quisiese, mi madre nunca había peinado sitio alguno. Lo que hacía era lo que decía: que estaba «por ahí», «en ello». Incansablemente en ello.

Algo que tampoco estaba al servicio de encontrar marido, en realidad. Y yo lo sabía. O al menos no un marido como fin. Un marido como qué, esa era la pregunta. ¿Cómo habría sido un marido como acceso a algo? Como en las vidas normales no. No era eso lo que quería. Un acantonamiento privado en la vida quizás. Un lugar que pudiera sentir como suyo de manera legítima, desde el que pudiera mirar a las demás con menos miedo. No parecía nada del otro mundo, ¿no? El problema es, creo, que se suponía que el fin era que te dejaran entrar en dicho lugar. Que te reconocieran, te acogieran, te rescataran… Aquel era el modelo de muchas de las circunstancias que mi madre concebía para sí y luego exaltaba. Su torbellino social. Sus mudanzas. Sus vacaciones, más tarde. Pero nunca eran «el fin». La inclusión se volvía exclusión, siempre.”
― Gwendoline Riley, My Phantoms

“I came back down, gingerly, as always, holding both banisters. I found Michael and Caitlin playing snooker, Vik at the bar. Putnam was talking to Katherine about his father. I’d heard the story he was telling, but I listened in anyway.”
― Gwendoline Riley, The Palm House

“We've done a good job of ruining our own lives," I said. "We should branch out and ruin someone else's.*”
― Gwendoline Riley, Cold Water

“A mi madre le encantaban las normas. Le encantaban las normas y los códigos y las expectativas establecidas. Me sale decir: como al perro le encanta que le tiren un palo. Era un propósito sin trabas. Libertad, en cierto modo. También era el consuelo de la multitud, de la participación. De no sentirse sola y desencaminada. En las conversaciones –o en los intentos de conversación–, parecía tener la mirada puesta en una recompensa similar. Disfrutaba respondiendo preguntas si sentía que tenía la respuesta correcta, una respuesta aceptable.”
― Gwendoline Riley, My Phantoms

“Damn it, I'm angry now. I do believe life is loss, I do, but my suffering-to-words-ratio was out of control: lying around composing nothing but these - righteous arias, month after month, these tawdry special pleas.”
― Gwendoline Riley, Opposed Positions

“Era algo que se le había quedado de algún programa de televisión o de una película, ¿no? Y había decidido que debía de ser suyo. O mejor, había decidido que era suyo. La comunidad indulgente. La celebridad local. Incluso me parecía haber visto esa película, en mi habitación, un domingo por la tarde en la BBC2.”
― Gwendoline Riley, My Phantoms

“He was a mystery. Intimacy is a mystery; maybe that's what he wanted.”
― Gwendoline Riley

“Michael, there in front of me. Each expression of helpless submission or bored compliance. This was him. How he passed. And living like that, of course, you would now and then end up with fiancees which had to be shaken off.”
― Gwendoline Riley, First Love

“I'm very glad my mother left my father, of course, but as I got older it did get harder to valorize that flight. This cover-seeking - desperate, adrenalized - had constituted her whole life as far as I could see. In avoidance of any reflection, thought. In which case her leaving him was a result of the same impulse that had her hook up with him in the first place. Not to think, not to connect: marry an insane bully. Simper at him. Not to be killed: get away from him. And her children? Her issue? How did they fit into her scheme? As sandbags? Decoys?”
― Gwendoline Riley, First Love

“Of course people could be fatuous. But why did Putnam have to take it so hard? When, for instance, somebody in the pub asked, ‘How’s old Halfwit?’ or ‘How’s Shouty?’ (this from Shouty Bumcrack, a name Katherine had come up with when Shove first arrived, and everyone had got to know that part of him, whether they wanted to or not, due to the way he wore his jeans), Putnam couldn’t just wince and say, Oh don’t ask. He had to make a point of looking affronted. ‘I’m glad someone finds it funny,’ he might say, under his breath. Or when that person was at the bar: ‘I’m sorry, but Shove is not a comic character.’ It wasn’t like Putnam not to be direct. This was a measure of the upset, I suppose, the way it was chasing him into his own furthest corners.”
― Gwendoline Riley, The Palm House

“Now how’s little Emily coming on?’ Putnam said. ‘She applied for the editor’s job. Did you hear that?’ said Michael. ‘To be editor? She’s barely graduated,’ said Putnam. ‘She’s doing her doctorate,’ Michael said. ‘Still, it’s interesting, isn’t it?’ ‘It’s psychotic,’ said Putnam. ‘She was an intern a week ago.’ ‘She is very good,’ said Katherine. ‘She’s not dazzling. I suppose she thought she’d throw the dice. She got an interview, by the way.’ ‘Good grief. You’re not serious.’ ‘She didn’t even want it, she told me,’ Vik said. ‘She said it would just be, quote, a great way to skip mid-career, unquote.’ ‘I see,’ said Putnam. ‘That is interesting, in a way. Of course we wouldn’t have dreamt . . .’ he said. ‘And when she didn’t get it?’ Caitlin said. ‘Unperturbed. On to the next thing.’ ‘Of course,’ said Putnam. ‘Maybe she could apply to be Secretary General of the UN,’ he said. ‘Or the new Pope.”
― Gwendoline Riley, The Palm House

“It was hard to tell Mitch’s age: his hair was white, but his skin was smooth and shiny. He wore starched jeans, and a short-sleeved shirt with knife creases down the sleeves. In place of a watch he had a small screen strapped to his wrist.”
― Gwendoline Riley, The Palm House