Timothy Findley > Quotes

“I doubt we will ever be forgiven. All I hope is – they'll remember we were human beings”
― Timothy Findley, The Wars

“People can only be found in what they do.”
― Timothy Findley, The Wars

“He said that in a way being loved is like being told you never have to die.”
― Timothy Findley, The Wars

“... too much brooding, not enough doing.”
― Timothy Findley

“Everyone who’s born has come from the sea. Your mother’s womb is just a sea in small. And birds come of seas on eggs. Horses lie in the sea before they’re born. The placenta is the sea. Your blood is the sea continued in your veins. We are the ocean — walking on the land.”
― Timothy Findley, The Wars

“In the dark that followed - Lucy said; "where I was born, the trees were always in the sun. And I left that place because it was intolerant of rain. Now, we are here in a place where there are no trees and there is only rain. And I intend to leave this place - because it is intolerant of light. Somewhere - there must be somewhere where darkness and light are reconciled. So I am starting a rumour, here and now, of yet another world. I don't know when it will present itself - I don't know where it will be. But - as with all those other worlds now past when it is ready, I intend to go there.”
― Timothy Findley, Not Wanted on the Voyage

“I still maintain that an ordinary human being has the right to be horrified by a mangled body seen on an afternoon walk.”
― Timothy Findley, The Wars

“Rodwell wandered into No Man's Land and put a bullet through his ears. On Sunday, Robert sat on his bed in the old hotel at Bailleul and read what Rodwell had written.

To my daughter, Laurine;
Love your mother.
Make your prayers against despair.
I am alive in everything I touch. Touch these pages and you have me in your fingertips. We survive in one another. Everything lives forever. Believe it. Nothing dies.
I am your father always.”
― Timothy Findley, The Wars

“Complaints about reality are immature.”
― Timothy Findley, NOT WANTED ON THE VO

“You will live when you live. No one else can ever live your life and no one else will ever know what you know...”
― Timothy Findley, The Wars

“They waited.
The door did not open.
The rain did not stop.
The darkness made a tent and covered them completely.”
― Timothy Findley, Not Wanted on the Voyage

“Think of any great man or woman. How can you separate them from the years in which they lived? You can't. Their greatness lies in their response to that moment.”
― Timothy Findley, The Wars

“...with every new manoeuvre, the light was growing dimmer--fading by numbers as well as strength--and the sound could no longer be heard, but only the pulse of it--seen going out in the darkness--losing its edges--caving in at its centre--webbing, now, as if a spider was spinning against the rain--until the last few strands of brightness fell--and were extinguished--silenced and removed from life and from all that lives forever.
And the bell tolled--but the ark, as ever, was adamant. Its shape had taken on a voice. And the voice said: no.”
― Timothy Findley, Not Wanted on the Voyage

“Nothing so completely verifies our perception of a thing as our killing of it.”
― Timothy Findley, The Wars

“As for the myths, take anyone's life and deny that most of it is deliberate self-delusion - an aggrandizement - a mixture of lies and truth, of what was wanted and what was had, producing the necessary justification for having been granted life in the first place. I was struck like a match, Lily wrote. I had no option but to burn.
You can put a period after that. Lily did. It was the story of her life.”
― Timothy Findley, The Piano Man's Daughter

“...no one belongs to anyone. We're all cut off at birth with a knife and left at the mercy of strangers. You hear that? Strangers. I know what you want to do. I know you're going to go away to be a soldier. Well-you can go to hell. I'm not responsible. I'm just another stranger. Birth I can give you-but life I cannot. I can't keep anyone alive. Not anymore.”
― Timothy Findley, The Wars

“Time is light, time is dark. You either dance, or you fall.”
― Timothy Findley, Famous Last Words

“I have dreamt of a life you will never know; the life of a loving and caring companion. I simply thought you should know. I see that you are in trouble. I watch and listen to you. I want to help, but you won't let me. So be it. I love you still. Do what you will, I shall watch over you.”
― Timothy Findley, Pilgrim

“The spaces between the perceiver and the thing perceived can [...] be closed with a shout of recognition.”
― Timothy Findley, The Wars

“All of this happened a long time ago. But not so long ago that everyone who played a part in it is dead. Some can still be met in dark old rooms with nurses in attendance.”
― Timothy Findley, The Wars

“I can't work in a house where there's saints. The minute there's saints, the devil sends messengers”
― Timothy Findley, The Piano Man's Daughter

“Mrs Ross adjusted her veil but did not put the flask away... 'Why is this happening to us, Davenport? What does it mean - to kill your children? Kill them and then go in there and sing about it! What does that mean?' She wept-but angrily.”
― Timothy Findley, The Wars

“As death approaches me, I regret this most, Pilgrim--aside from my loss of you. I regret that I blamed, so often, others--for faults and problems of my own making. And, if not of my own making, certainly of my own tolerance. That men could not love men--or women, women--that poverty was the fault and responsibility of the poverty-stricken (how can I have thought so!)--and that 'good' was something that could be decreed by governments, as if by creating laws we could establish the boundaries of someone else's needs and joys and confidence. How dare we decree what is 'good' for others when for us it has been a gift!'

Sybil Quartermaine
Hôtel Baur au Lac
Zürich
14th May 1912”
― Findley Timothy

“1915. The year itself looks sepia and soiled-muddied like its pictures. In the snapshots everyone at first seems timid-lost-irresolute. Boys and men squinting at the camera.”
― Timothy Findley, The Wars

“The mud. There are no good similes. Mud must be a Flemish word. Mud was invented here. Mudland must have been its name. The ground is the colour of steel. Over most of the plain there isn't a trace of topsoil; only sand and clay. The Belgians call them 'clyttes', these fields, and the further you go towards the sea, the worse the clyttes become. In them, the water is reached by the plough at an average depth of eighteen inches. When it rains (which is almost constantly from early September through to March, except when it snows) the water rises at you out of the ground. It rises from your footprints-and an army marching over a field can cause a flood. In 1916, it was said that you 'waded to the front'. Men and horses sank from sight. They drowned in mud. Their graves, it seemed, just dug themselves and pulled them down.”
― Timothy Findley, The Wars

“What you people who weren't yet born can never know is what it meant to sleep in cities under silent falls of snow when all night long the only sounds you heard were dogs that parked at trains that passed so far away they took a short cut through your dreams and no one even woke. It was the war that changed that. It was. After the Great War for Civilization - sleep was different everywhere...”
― Timothy Findley, The Wars

“in a way being loved is like being told you never have to die.”
― Timothy Findley, The Wars

“Me?" said Bragg. "I'm not alive. Revived, from time to time - maybe. but not alive."

Liar."

Try me."

You forget, Mister Bragg - Stu honey - Stuart darling - Bragg baby. I already have."

They had almost reached their destination.

Col said: "I don't have burn marks for nothing, my dear. I don't have these scars by chance. I'm covered with your fingerprints. Covered from head to toe and back again on the other side."

You sound just like Minna," said Bragg.

I know," Col said. "I know I do. I've been practising.”
― Timothy Findley, Dust to Dust

“Here was an unknown quantity-a child in breeches with a blue scarf wound around his neck whose job it was to get them out and back alive. This...was the greatest terror of war: what you didn't know of the men who told you what to do-where to go and when. What if they were mad-or stupid? What if their fear was greater than yours? Or what if they were brave and crazy-wanting and demanding bravery from you? He looked away. He thought of being born-and trusting your parents. Maybe that was the same. Your parents could be crazy too. Or stupid. Still-he'd rather his father was with him-telling him what to do. Then he smiled. He knew that his father would take one look at the crater and tell him not to go.”
― Timothy Findley, The Wars

“He took his aim. His arm wavered. His eyes burned with sweat. Why didn't someone come and jump on his back and make him stop?

He fired.

A chair fell over in his mind.”
― Timothy Findley, The Wars