David Thewlis > Quotes

“I want that history. I want that gravitas. I want the texture of death. I want people to know and feel sorry for me and comfort me and say things like 'How awful' and ‘We can't imagine.’ I want that. I want that awful intense and serious unhappiness, cos then I might feel better, and then I might be happy.”
― David Thewlis, The Late Hector Kipling

“I walk to Oxford Street and climb on the number 8. It's freezing and it starts to rain and it's the ugliest bus I've ever seen, rattling down the ugliest streets, in the ugliest city, in the ugliest country, in the ugliest of all possible worlds.”
― David Thewlis, The Late Hector Kipling

“He'd been let down so often
His brow was on the floor
But then they found
A small hole in the ground
And let him down some more”
― David Thewlis

“I feel like I'm in a film about a struggling artist who keeps getting up at all hours of the night to look at his big, blank empty canvas. And in a way I am. Except that i'm not struggling. I'm Hector Kipling. I might be getting up at all hours of the night to look at my big, blank, empty canvas, but I am not fucking struggling.”
― David Thewlis, The Late Hector Kipling

“An hour crept by. I think it was an hour. I hardly recognized it. Bearing no resemblance to any of the numerous other hours of my acquaintance, I hardly recognized a single second of it.”
― David Thewlis

“They say that a soul is sustained in the memories of those they leave behind. But what kind of a life is that? A life of yesterdays. A life of not actually being there. No new stories, no new jokes. No prospects, no hope. In other words: Death.”
― David Thewlis, The Late Hector Kipling

“I’d say that it breaks my heart, were it not for the fact that the idiom has always disappointed. The heart, after all, is a pump, and a broken pump no longer pumps. Alas, this is scarcely the case. If only the heart really did break in moments like this; then the game would be up and we might all take our ease. But no; rather the heart is renewed, made vital, and pumps all the more, heralding not the end, but a new and appalling beginning.”
― David Thewlis, The Late Hector Kipling

“And so goodbye, Eleni. Farewell and adieu. Which pains me to say. For you see, I think about her till all thinking hurts. Like a wrecking ball's punch to the belly of my brain. I think about her more than I think about anything or anyone else. I think about her to the point of being utterly baffled as to the meaning of the word think. Till think rhymes with clink, and thought rhymes with caught. Thinking with sinking. Wedding bells with prison cells. First kiss with only this. And love let loose with hangman's noose.”
― David Thewlis, The Late Hector Kipling

“I was right all along. Because death, you see, was the answer. I'll say it again: Death was the answer.
When my life was starved of death it was not really what you would call a life. Since my life sought justification through representation, it was imperative that this representation should be consummate by way of being omniscient. As long as the ultimate desolation remained in the shadows then all my attempts to capture and illuminate the profound were damned to the shallows. Consequently, when my life was beset by, not one, but multiple bereavements, then the process blossomed in the glow of a glad and orgasmic ignition. What I'm trying to say is that one cannot interpret the curves and drops of existence until one has skidded a little on the ice and gravel of annihilation.”
― David Thewlis, The Late Hector Kipling

“Secrets don’t like to be locked up. They’re like rats, they’ll bite you if you back them into a corner.”
― David Thewlis, The Late Hector Kipling

“One day I’ll learn not to feel this way. One day I’ll have learned to pour milk over this agony. One day the next thing I do won’t be the wrong thing to do.”
― David Thewlis, The Late Hector Kipling

“She's been late before, and no doubt she'll be late again. One day, of course, we'll all be late. The late Hector Kipling.”
― David Thewlis, The Late Hector Kipling

“My body, it seems, is no longer my own. My brain and bones are beset by parasites, and my bowels are being devoured by something huge and ticklish; six furry legs, two million eyes, needle-sharp teeth and an outer shell of blister and scab. I shall soon be hollow. And once I'm hollow, then pain can move in. Real pain can move in and put its feet up on the ledges of my spine. Can't wait.”
― David Thewlis, The Late Hector Kipling

“It's difficult to think of things to say. Mum's sat upright in her chair on the other side of the bed. What is there to say? How can we possibly discuss anything other than the crisis set before us? And yet how can we possibly discuss the crisis set before us? We sit there for another hour. It is the longest silence of my life. The sort of silence that might be broken at any moment. The sort of silence that may shift, but never does. That sort of silence. The worst kind, believe me - I know about silence.”
― David Thewlis, The Late Hector Kipling

“Nothing hurt, but I wondered if anything was broken. Maybe everything was broken. Maybe I was finished. Maybe all this seeing into the future meant that I was finished. Maybe one is only permitted to see into the future when one has no further investment in it. Maybe one would eventually tire of seeing the future and beg to see the past instead, as a treat, on a Sunday: three hours of the past for a whole week of the future. Every Sunday, every week, for evermore.”
― David Thewlis, The Late Hector Kipling

“A baby, a toddler, an adolescent, an adult, half me, half Eleni? You see, artists aren't very good at all that. Artists are a little perturbed by all that kind of thing. Biological creation. They're suspicious. They imagine that it might hinder all their small plastic creations. They're afraid that biological creation won't be creative. They're afraid of the banal and the mundane. They live in fear of the shit and the puke, of the fatigue, the duty and the loss of control, the immensity of failure and the clash of wills. That's what artists are afraid of. I know - I am an artist. I'm Hector Kipling.”
― David Thewlis, The Late Hector Kipling

“Why can't I be one of those carefree people? One of those passionate people? The sort of person who seems to enjoy their own personality? Why do I feel like my head's filled with civil servants sat at little black tables, reading, signing, stamping, forwarding and filing every fucking thought?”
― David Thewlis, The Late Hector Kipling

“I am a joint of meat,
Not veal, nor beef, nor lamb.
My tail is short and sweet,
I oink — therefore I’m ham.”
― David Thewlis, The Late Hector Kipling

“Kirk used to go out with an agoraphobic called Audrey. Or should I say he used to stay in with an agoraphobic called Audrey.”
― David Thewlis, The Late Hector Kipling

“Just as I am about to poke my head above the trench my brain is assailed with the dizzy clamour of the mob of critics. I'm not sure if that is the correct collective noun when one is speaking of a gathering of critics - what else should it be? An ostentation, as in peacocks? Or a murder, as in crows? Perhaps a pride, an envy, a gluttony, or even a sloth.”
― David Thewlis, The Late Hector Kipling

“I hold her tight, tight enough to break her. How simple it would be right now to break her, to love her so hard she snaps. To crush her. It’s an easy thing to bring horror into a room.”
― David Thewlis, The Late Hector Kipling