Lesley Glaister > Quotes

“When she entered the sitting room she was not at first noticed. The music had changed now, to something slower, and the women were dancing; Harri’s dark head against the breast of Gwen’s white shirt, Gwen’s hand low on Harri’s back. Gwen’s eyes were closed and the look on her face, serene and blissful, sent a fright through Clem.”
― Lesley Glaister, Blasted Things

“The iris of his good eye was a curious pale grey, almost silver; the edges were darker, as if tarnished like a coin, and the artist made a brave attempt to paint the other eye to match. The eyebrow had been finely painted, with the most miniature of brushes, the most delicate of strokes, but it was a shade too yellow. The blank eye gazed beyond her.”
― Lesley Glaister, Blasted Things

“Every impression ever made on a person from newborn babyhood onwards will contribute to the shape and texture of the imagination.”
― Lesley Glaister

“She hurries out of the hammering rain into the puddled shelter of St Pancras. As arranged, he's waiting outside WH Smith, and her heart jerks like a bad dog on a lead.”
― Lesley Glaister, A Particular Man

“She likes his wide, easy smile, the texture of his skin, the thick fair hair on his arms, almost like fur, the wholesome soapy smell of him. And she likes his height. He's taller by far than any British man she's been with; it's excessive, unnecessary, gorgeous. Invisibly, she sighs. Of course, she always knew it was temporary: that's the deal with G.I.'s.”
― Lesley Glaister, A Particular Man

“Doll bends over, checking a barrel; she got hips on her under that skirt, sturdy, bovine, though she’d kill him if he said as much. His cheek yearns for her lap, for her stroking hands, for her fantastically common reek of beer and ham and Parma Violets.”
― Lesley Glaister, Blasted Things

“Neville's a pleasant sort of standby when there's nothing more exciting on the go. A safe, attractive, reliable chap. He's respectful, never having tried to get her into bed which, if she was a better sort of person, she might appreciate.”
― Lesley Glaister, A Particular Man

“You can always rely on Daddy to state the bleeding obvious; it used to madden her and Edgar, but now she finds it soothing.”
― Lesley Glaister, A Particular Man

“Iris kissing the lips of a dying boy. Imagine! So very kind, so killingly funny! Cross-eyed Iris in her specs, whatever did the poor boy think?”
― Lesley Glaister, Blasted Things

“She lay a moment longer. Oh it was queer; she was ignited. Now she understood it. Love. And she was changed.”
― Lesley Glaister, Blasted Things

“Where was the fear? She searched herself as she listened: sometimes the rat-tat-tat of gunfire, rapid and snippy like the keys of two vast duelling type-writers battering out threats to each other on a paper sky.”
― Lesley Glaister, Blasted Things

“To think how thrilled she was when she took the job to have to sign the Official Secrets Act. It seemed so deliciously cloak and dagger, and she thought she'd become privy to important national secrets, or at least something interesting.  But it's all piffle, baffling as hell and twice as boring.”
― Lesley Glaister, A Particular Man

“He frowned, pulled her roughly against him. She could feel the tickle of his chest hair against her cheek and his bristles on top of her head. She could feel the outraged beating of his heart.”
― Lesley Glaister, Blasted Things

“Walking back in the lamp-stained dark, the duckboards greasy and glittering with frost, she wanted to sing, she wanted to scream, she wanted to make love to him, she wanted to die.”
― Lesley Glaister, Blasted Things

“Right on the dot, Ted waltzes in as if he owns the place. Vince looks up from the pump. Christ he’s got his ice-cream seller’s jacket on, straw hat, moustache gleaming like a pair of brass handles.”
― Lesley Glaister, Blasted Things

“And she comes, she actually bloody well comes, bustling down between the beds, bless her heart, in her best coat and vile black straw hat, more fit for a funeral than anything. He’ll get her another, whatever she wants, the best money can buy. He’s so pleased to see her he could nearly bloody cry.”
― Lesley Glaister, Blasted Things

“He fingers her stuff, her undies, a stocking. He winds it round his hand, tight silk, unwinds it, lays it back across the chair where it dangles like leg skin.”
― Lesley Glaister, Blasted Things

“Aida watches Dennis open his tobacco pouch and stuff his pipe. As a child she was entranced by the process, and the glamorous stink of it, the special words: flake, shag, shank, dottle. He told her that each pipe had its own ghost, which is the taste when you suck it, empty and cold. Sometimes he let her taste the ghost.”
― Lesley Glaister, A Particular Man

“And then came Mrs Fletcher, snapping her scissors, the soft scrunch of the blades through thick hanks, the gradual sensation of lightness. Now every scrap of hair that Powell had touched was gone.”
― Lesley Glaister, Blasted Things

“He gazes at the tree's roots tangled with broken gravestones; root and stone merge like something in the jungle.How mixed up everything is. Memories mix and merge till he hardly knows what's true. Sometimes he thinks Edgar kissed him; sometimes he knows it never happened.”
― Lesley Glaister, A Particular Man

“The door knocker's a knocking fist, or it's meant to be, but it makes him think of a punch in the gob.”
― Lesley Glaister, A Particular Man

“Clem ground out her cigarette and immediately wished she hadn’t. It had felt like something live she could hold onto”
― Lesley Glaister, Blasted Things

“He slid the ring onto my wedding finger. It fitted perfectly. A good omen? I tipped my hand this way and that, admiring the extravagant sparkle, and kept my truth buttoned all buttoned up.”
― Lesley Glaister, A Particular Man

“During the film (long, miserable) he takes her hand and squeezes rhythmically as if he's milking a cow.  She's distracted by wondering if he has ever, in fact, milked a cow.”
― Lesley Glaister, A Particular Man

“The infant’s eyes were as black as if night were trapped behind his lids, and when he opened them she feared she’d be consumed.”
― Lesley Glaister, Blasted Things

“I lost God in the jungle. Before that, I had the normal sort of watery English Christianity. Out there some men got more religious, others lost it. What kind of god would allow this? etc.”
― Lesley Glaister, A Particular Man

“Tiny Eleanor in her black coat, is dinkily perfect, like a woman carved on a mechanical clock, nodding, lifting her hand, in jerky greeting. Her eyes might slice jealously through any gaze between Clem and Corin, but they can't sever the meaning of those gazes.”
― Lesley Glaister, A Particular Man