Isha

“Yes, the death of young men in battle is a tragedy - I’d lost four brothers, I didn’t need anybody to tell me that. A tragedy worthy of any number of laments - but theirs is not the worst fate. I looked at Andromache, who’d have to live the rest of her amputated life as a slave, and I thought: We need a new song. ”
― Pat Barker, The Silence of the Girls

“How do you separate a tiger's beauty from its ferocity? Or a cheetah's elegance from the speed of its attack? Achilles was like that -- the beauty and the terror were two sides of a single coin.”
― Pat Barker, The Silence of the Girls

“I thought: And I do what countless women before me have been forced to do. I spread my legs for the man who killed my husband and my brother.”
― Pat Barker, The Silence of the Girls

“This is what free people never understand. A slave isn't a person who's being treated as a thing. A slave is a thing, as much in her own estimation as in anybody else's.”
― Pat Barker, The Silence of the Girls