Karen Perry > Quotes

“It was as though each of us—in separate and distinct ways—had been plunged back into the past. Fragments of old memories were coming back at unexpected moments... Old ghosts awoke, stirred angrily into life by this girl, like a wasp's nest struck with a stick.”
― Karen Perry, Girl Unknown

“paralyzed by the past, caught in the amber of loss.”
― Karen Perry, The Innocent Sleep

“Even the most saintly among us can slip.”
― Karen Perry, The Boy That Never Was

“When Dillon's loss had aged us both; there was no doubt about that when I looked at photographs of the two of us in Tangier, we seemed to be kids. We were students when we first met. Bright-eyed and all that. Now, well, yes, there were lines of age on her face, lines of sadness. In the dark blue-gray of her eyes, I saw an extra depth of melancholy, but not despair; instead, there was a depthless sympathy, a forgiving and timeless patience. The difference between us was, whereas I looked ragged and rough around the edges, Robin had aged gracefully.”
― Karen Perry, The Innocent Sleep

“I have four children under the age of eight! Two of them I seriously suspect have ADHD or Asperger's or some bloody thing. And one of them is waking up twice in the night for a feed. What does he expect? That I sit around daydreaming about jumping his bones? Please. All I want to do is sleep.”
― Karen Perry, The Innocent Sleep

“The X Factor was on TV. The world was falling apart. Ireland was bankrupt. I had seen my dead son. But all the whole of fucking Ireland and the U.K. were talking about was The X Factor.”
― Karen Perry, The Innocent Sleep

“Why is it that we measure our love affairs in temporal terms? A marriage that lasts forty years is viewed a success. But some things that are short can be more meaningful, in some ways more lasting than those that stretch out for our lifetime.”
― Karen Perry, The Innocent Sleep

“The trick is not to panic. But it was hard to stay calm in a climate of fear.”
― Karen Perry, The Innocent Sleep