Damian > Damian's Quotes

“We are not all in the same boat. We are in the same storm. Some of us are on superyachts. Some of us have just the one oar.”
― Damian Barr, Imagine a Country: Ideas for a Better Future

“You don't realise how much you're holding onto until you start to let go of it. I had had loads of therapy and thought I had come to terms with who I am, but there's something in the process of writing that unlocks other experiences, other emotions and you have to be prepared for that.”
― Damian Barr, Maggie & Me

“Researching and writing my novel has taken me to some really dark places. It is when you are in these dark places that you can see: there is always hope, there is always love.”
― Damian Barr, You Will Be Safe Here

“The second time I try to kill a man I'm fourteen. Killing a man seems a very grown-up thing to do - like writing in Biro.”
― Damian Barr, Maggie & Me

“Mary the Canary lives in a cloud of perfume and colours. She's an auxiliary nurse by day and a country and western singer by night: bed pans and power ballass. She's so glamorous she makes Mrs Hart look plain. She is the other woman and I'm bring trained to hate her even though I've never met her.”
― Damian Barr, Maggie & Me

“I think the secret of memoirs is keeping those parts of yourself off the page, which makes what you do share more valuable.”
― Damian Barr, Maggie & Me

“Maggie, tou made it possible -but not probably for me to be the man I am now.”
― Damian Barr, Maggie & Me

“I want to watch you walk through the world before you leave it and if you stumble I'll rush forward to catch you. I like to think I'd show you the kindness you never showed me. I'd like you to owe me a favour. I want to show you that I did it. I want you to be proud of me.”
― Damian Barr, Maggie & Me

“Memory implies that there is some static time and place you can go back to, whereas if you relive it by trying to put yourself back in that context, its more nuanced, less black and white. More traumatic, but also more exciting. When I knew I had to write about things that would be painful, I put off doing it for ages. But then eventually the fear of not doing it becomes greater than the fear of doing it.”
― Damian Barr, Maggie & Me

“Quotes › Authors › D › Damian Barr › The stories we tell ourselves about...

The stories we tell ourselves about ourselves are very often not really what happened. And as I started to write stuff down, I started to challenge what I thought I knew about myself, my culture, my family, all of it. It was a huge, destroying process that completely took over my life. I just wasn't here, I mean I was physically present, but I wasn't here, I was back in the 1980s.”
― Damian Barr, Maggie & Me

“There's no place like home. No place safer. No place scarier.”
― Damian Barr, Maggie & Me

“Equal marriage makes a huge impact, because people see gay people being allowed to be happy,” he says. “And these events involve families – and not just families but caterers and florists and hotels. And all these people are forced to accept that here are two people who are in love and want to build a family together . . . But I’m not complacent. Progress can falter, and rights can be taken away, and people can be repressed again very easily.”
― Damian Barr, Out There: An Anthology of Scottish LGBT writing

“Go outside. Don’t tell anyone and don’t bring your phone. Start walking and keep walking until you no longer know the road like the palm of your hand, because we walk the same roads day in and day out, to the bus and back home and we cease to see. We walk in our sleep and teach our muscles to work without thinking and I dare you to walk where you have not yet walked and I dare you to notice. Don’t try to get anything out of it, because you won’t. Don’t try to make use of it, because you can’t. And that’s the point. Just walk, see, sit down if you like. And be. Just be, whatever you are with whatever you have, and realise that that is enough to be happy.
There’s a whole world out there, right outside your window. You’d be a fool to miss it.”
― Charlotte Eriksson, You're Doing Just Fine

“Maybe from as early as when you're five or six, there's been a whisper going at the back of your head, saying: “One day, maybe not so long from now, you'll get to know how it feels.” So you're waiting, even if you don't quite know it, waiting for the moment when you realise that you really are different to them; that there are people out there, like Madame, who don't hate you or wish you any harm, but who nevertheless shudder at the very thought of you – of how you were brought into this world and why – and who dread the idea of your hand brushing against theirs. The first time you glimpse yourself through the eyes of a person like that, it's a cold moment. It's like walking past a mirror you've walked past every day of your life, and suddenly it shows you something else, something troubling and strange.”
― Kazuo Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go

“Wanting to be liked can get in the way of truth.”
― Delia Ephron, Sister Mother Husband Dog: Etc.

“To give your positive or negative attention to something is a way of giving energy. The most damaging form of behavior is withholding your attention.”
― Masaru Emoto, The Hidden Messages in Water

“Elsewhere there are no mobile phones. Elsewhere sleep is deep and the mornings are wonderful. Elsewhere art is endless, exhibitions are free and galleries are open twenty-four hours a day. Elsewhere alcohol is a joke that everybody finds funny. Elsewhere everybody is as welcoming as they’d be if you’d come home after a very long time away and they’d really missed you. Elsewhere nobody stops you in the street and says, are you a Catholic or a Protestant, and when you say neither, I’m a Muslim, then says yeah but are you a Catholic Muslim or a Protestant Muslim? Elsewhere there are no religions. Elsewhere there are no borders. Elsewhere nobody is a refugee or an asylum seeker whose worth can be decided about by a government. Elsewhere nobody is something to be decided about by anybody. Elsewhere there are no preconceptions. Elsewhere all wrongs are righted. Elsewhere the supermarkets don’t own us. Elsewhere we use our hands for cups and the rivers are clean and drinkable. Elsewhere the words of the politicians are nourishing to the heart. Elsewhere charlatans are known for their wisdom. Elsewhere history has been kind. Elsewhere nobody would ever say the words bring back the death penalty. Elsewhere the graves of the dead are empty and their spirits fly above the cities in instinctual, shapeshifting formations that astound the eye. Elsewhere poems cancel imprisonment. Elsewhere we do time differently.
Every time I travel, I head for it. Every time I come home, I look for it.”
― Ali Smith, Public Library and Other Stories

“Read the best books first, or you may not have a chance to read them at all.”
― Henry David Thoreau, A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers

“Reading is to the mind what exercise is to the body.”
― Joseph Addison

“Above all this the stars shine. Willem pauses for a moment and feels the world turn as he struggles to pick out the Southern Cross among the interstellar static, He's never seen a sky so big or so bright. It's dizzying and he spins slowly to take it all in...”
― Damian Barr, You Will Be Safe Here

“In the water, in the dark. It doesn’t matter whose fingers find whose toes. Nobody can see. The stars are saying nothing.”
― Damian Barr, You Will Be Safe Here

“Q: Why write about slavery? Haven’t we had enough stories about slavery? Why do we need another one?

A: I could have written about upper middle class white people who feel sad sometimes, but there’s a lot of competition.”
― Colson Whitehead

“Reading is an act of radical empathy: turning the page instead of turning away.”
― Damian Barr, Maggie & Me

“I think it pisses God off if you walk by the color purple in a field somewhere and don't notice it. People think pleasing God is all God cares about. But any fool living in the world can see it always trying to please us back.”
― Alice Walker, The Color Purple

“Time moves slowly, but passes quickly.”
― Alice Walker, The Color Purple

“Everything want to be loved. Us sing and dance and holler, just trying to be loved.”
― Alice Walker, The Color Purple

“Cape Town, so beautiful she was bored hearing about it and would never go just to spite it.”
― Damian Barr, You Will Be Safe Here

“The news is a never-ending horror movie and nobody knows how it's going to end”
― Damian Barr, You Will Be Safe Here

“It isn't what we say or think that defines us, but what we do.”
― Jane Austen, Sense and Sensibility

“Sometimes we want to unbelong as much as we want to belong.”
― Deborah Levy, The Cost of Living: A Working Autobiography