Hot Milk Quotes

“We have to mourn our dead, but we cannot let them take over our life.”
― Deborah Levy, Hot Milk

“My problem is that I want to smoke the cigar and for someone else to light it. I want to blow out smoke. Like a volcano. Like a monster. I want to fume. I do not want to be the girl whose job it is to wail in a high-pitched voice at funerals.”
― Deborah Levy, Hot Milk

“How do we set about not imagining something?”
― Deborah Levy, Hot Milk

“What is a sigh? That would be another good subject for a field study. Is it just a long, deep, audible exhalation of breath? Rose's sigh was intense but not subdued. It was frustrated but not yet sad. A sigh resets the respiratory system so it was possible that my mother had been holding her breath, which suggests she was more nervous than she appeared to be. A sigh is an emotional response to being set a difficult task.”
― Deborah Levy, Hot Milk

“Time has shattered, it's cracked like my lips.”
― Deborah Levy, Hot Milk

“I have researched aboriginal culture, Mayan hieroglyphics and the corporate culture of a Japanese car manufacturer, and I have written essays on the internal logic of various other societies, but I haven't a clue about my own logic.”
― Deborah Levy, Hot Milk

“Afterwards, I will have to tie the trees to bamboo poles so the wind will not determine their shape. A tree cannot be given form by the vagaries of the wind.”
― Deborah Levy, Hot Milk