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

“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

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

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

'Because. Why is what you do art? Because you say so.”
― 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 think they're being cheap with their lives, that's why. So they seem ravenous for the worst thoughts I can have.”
― Gwendoline Riley

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

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

“Can the future be a white expanse? Can you run in, heart pounding?

I find I've never given much thought to the future. Beyond that sense of getting away. Derelictions, you see, left and right. Yet here I am.”
― Gwendoline Riley, First Love

“I said 'I was imagining you as a little boy, and as a teenager, and as an old man.'

He said: 'I was looking at you and thinking how young you look, and how old at the same time.”
― 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

“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

“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

“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 returned it with a letter saying I didn't want to stay in touch. 'I'm not interested,' I wrote. 'This isn't working and I want to get on with my life.' Stupid letter. Wrongheaded. How did my father read it? As a challenge, of course. A 'spicing up,' even. What followed was a struggle. There was nowhere he wasn't, suddenly, and his efforts only drew strength from each refusal. It was like trying to deny an excited octopus. Repeated unhookings. It took a sort of disappearing act on my part, in the end, to get away. After which, he started sending my brother tickets. (My mother told me.) But six months in, with no reply, those letters stopped.”
― Gwendoline Riley, First Love

“My father died of the same thing that Edwyn had suffered... Was I too stupid--I couldn't be--to take a lesson from that? Could I trust myself? Not to make my life a lair.”
― Gwendoline Riley, First Love

“It's true about the running water. You can hear anything you want to in 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

“How do I know what's coming? I always do know. Something around the eyes.”
― Gwendoline Riley, First Love

“So it was both strange, and dreadful--I knew it--to feel that I was managing him, in a way. Beyond bringing him out of himself, or my genuine interest; that I was maintaining this keen and appreciative front as a way to keep him calm, or to distract him. Like--I don't know--throwing some sausages to a guard dog... His scorn would finish us both, I was sure. It was a deep instinct, though, as I was finding out. The deepest, in this new world? I had to hope not. But I was very much without bearings, that first year.”
― Gwendoline Riley, First Love

“My voice got dull. I spoke like a machine that was running down, while he seemed only to gain energy.”
― Gwendoline Riley, First Love

“I wrote down, things like:
Untangle yourself. Stop saying you love him. You're wearing a groove in your mind. Say it when you mean it. Save money. Small steps. Save money every month. Remember you're a grown woman now. Be more proud and more relaxed. Don't feel persecuted by stupid students. Don't think about them. Don't let your mind get colonized. Get on with your work. Don't pet him. Don't act like a baby. Don't be a cat. Be decent to him and to yourself. Respect yourself and him. See your friends. Don't be sly. Don't be deceitful. Don't snoop. Don't ask him questions for the sake of it, it's lonely-making to sit and listen when he's said it before, when he won't let you in. Keep your footing. Leave the room if he calls you a name. If you save money you can leave the flat if he's nasty. Stand up for yourself but don't waste your energy. This is your time and your energy. Don't try and 'manage' him. Be natural and let him be natural. That's what love is. No more cramped feelings, on either side.

How did these small steps fare? Strangely. Keeping myself to myself more. Sometimes it felt like we'd done it. Sometimes not. Sometimes he whimpered in pain and I was Mrs Pusskins again, and what was wrong with that? It felt soothing. Coming home from work, standing on the landing, he'd open his mouth and lift his arms for a hug, and we'd hold each other and I'd feel safe and happy, with someone I could love in a natural way.

Once, when I was in the living room after he'd gone to bed, he came in and did a little pirouette in his Y-fronts, trying to get me to look. I did look up and smile, but I didn't run to him, like I used to, didn't fuss him. Was that wrong? He performed a hurt little moue in the proscenium, before walking off slowly with an 'I say' and a sort of half toddlerish wobbling walk.
'That was a good dance!' I called after him, stupidly.
I did see my friends more, stayed later at work to do my own work.”
― 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