Lucy Grubb

“And for two hours the wine was poured, the cheese cut, and the two men talked. Of what? Who knows? Of love, of war, of the past. And they listened with hearts instead of ears, and in the candlelit kitchen three floors up in an old palazzo, death was put on hold. For another night or day or week or year.”
― Sarah Winman, Still Life

“There are moments in life, so monumental and still, that the memory can never be retrieved without a catch to the throat or an interruption to the beat of the heart. Can never be retrieved without the rumbling disquiet of how close that moment came to not having happened at all.”
― Sarah Winman, Still Life

“So, time heals. Mostly. Sometimes carelessly. And in unsuspecting moments, the pain catches and reminds one of all that's been missing. The fulcrum of what might have been. But then it passes. Winter moves into spring and swallows return. The proximity of new skin returns to the sheets. Beauty does what is required. Jobs fulfil and conversations inspire. Loneliness becomes a mere Sunday. Scattered clothes. Empty bowls. Rotting fruit. Passing time. But still life in all its beauty and complexity.”
― Sarah Winman, Still Life

“We're embarking on a world of new language and new systems. A world of stares and misunderstandings and humiliations and we'll feel every single one of them, boy. But we mustn't let our inability to know what's what diminish us. Because it'll try. We have to remains curious and open. Two words for you: ley lines.
Ley lines?
Straight lines of electromagnetic energy crisscrossing the Earth at special sites, drawing men and women—and ideas—to their mysterious pulse. We were drawn here, temps. No two ways about it. As many have been before. That Baedeker book? You know what it said?
Go on.
That 'even those whose usual avocations are of the most prosaic nature unconsciously become admirers of poetry and art in Italy.' Would that be so bad? To become an admirer of poetry and art? Until we figure it all out.
It wouldn't, Cress.
To be infused with all the city has to offer and has offered over the centuries? Our purpose revealing itself like the slow unfolding of an iris flower.
Ulysses grinned. It's started already, Cress.
What has?
The poetry.
Cress blushed and stood up. I'll get the cheese, he said.”
― Sarah Winman, Still Life