David Storey > Quotes

“Though what I have in mind’, he said, ‘is something far different. I thought if we listened to the music you could write down whatever you felt.’ He turned on the gramophone.”
― David Storey, Saville

“won literary prizes of some note, twice being shortlisted for the Booker Prize, for instance, and once winning it outright (Saville). Their styles of presentation might be described as ‘elemental’: in the case of Radcliffe,”
― David Storey, Saville

“His life had been fragmented into a third and final part. First there’d been his life in the village, then his life at the school; now there was a more formidable portion of his existence which he’d never, consciously, been aware of before, a self-absorption which took him away from the other two.”
― David Storey, Saville

“Bletchley said, sweating freshly in the heat of the bus. ‘Some of the species adapt, others don’t. In effect, when coal is acquired by wholly mechanical means or perhaps isn’t even needed at all, people like Batty and his brothers, and Stringer, won’t have a function. And when the function ceases so does the species, or those parts of it that can’t recognize or create a further function.”
― David Storey, Saville

“He felt his mother’s presence acutely, a kind of animality, dull, uncomprehending, locked in its own kind of inconclusiveness: the slow alarm that had gradually overwhelmed her as she watched her family growing up, startled, seeing them slowly replace her in significance and purpose, and saying, ‘So this is how it happens.”
― David Storey, Pasmore

“Factory fodder. I don’t see what hope they have in their lives. I mean,’ he added, ‘what prospect do they have before them? A dance hall and a bottle of beer.’ He blew out a cloud of smoke. Something about the gesture reminded Colin of Dr Dorman. It was on this same bus, and at the same time on a Saturday evening, that he would ride back to the village after seeing Margaret. He gazed out of the window for a while. ‘I mean, it’s an animal existence when you come down to it. What do you think?”
― David Storey, Saville

“Heights”
― David Storey, Saville

“was talking to that girl we were dancing with.’ Bletchley ran his handkerchief round beneath his collar. ‘Apparently he hardly makes anything out of it at all.”
― David Storey, Saville

“Perhaps it’s all an animal existence,’ he said. He had to raise his voice above the rattle of the bus. Below them passed the dark waters of the river.”
― David Storey, Saville

“obsessive”
― David Storey, Saville