Wide Open Quotes

“I dreamed I saw you dead in a place by the water. A ravaged place. All flat and empty and wide open. And you were covered in some kind of binding. Like a mummy. Something white and reflective, from head to toe. And the light shone on you. Oh, how it shone on you! It glanced off you, and it was like a pure, bright silver. The wind was singing. It sang: you have suffered enough. You have suffered enough. Then death came and he kissed you. Lightly. Gently. Upon the lips. There is nothing beyond, he whispered, only me, only me. There is nothing beyond. Only me.”
― Nicola Barker, Wide Open

“But like a pretty pleated skirt at a country dance, Lily flounced right on out.”
― Nicola Barker, Wide Open

“her clothes were hung on old metal hangers like a threadbare assemblage of frustrated sighs.”
― Nicola Barker, Wide Open: Winner of the IMPAC Dublin Literary Award for Dark Contemporary Fiction

“Sometimes I feel like my whole life has been a long, long wait for something horrible that never actually happened. Like I’ve been in water, up to my neck, fighting to stay afloat, year after year. But if only I’d felt for the bottom I’d have found it. It was there. The ocean bed, just below where I was treading. It was there.”
― Nicola Barker, Wide Open: Winner of the IMPAC Dublin Literary Award for Dark Contemporary Fiction

“The prison was like a set of dirty teeth, and the land around it was like a bad mouth, and the sky above it was like the grey face of the person who owned the teeth and the mouth and didn’t care a damn about either of them.”
― Nicola Barker, Wide Open: Winner of the IMPAC Dublin Literary Award for Dark Contemporary Fiction

“Her heart was red outside and all clogged up at its centre like a ripe ball of Edam.”
― Nicola Barker, Wide Open: Winner of the IMPAC Dublin Literary Award for Dark Contemporary Fiction

“she would always be, at the very best, a dewdrop on life’s river bank.”
― Nicola Barker, Wide Open: Winner of the IMPAC Dublin Literary Award for Dark Contemporary Fiction

“Nathan’s thoughts were a giant, angry sea tap-tap-tapping on a small dyke wall.”
― Nicola Barker, Wide Open: Winner of the IMPAC Dublin Literary Award for Dark Contemporary Fiction

“Her love was a glob of phlegm on life’s high street.”
― Nicola Barker, Wide Open: Winner of the IMPAC Dublin Literary Award for Dark Contemporary Fiction

“It was the tail end of summer. It was the beginning of winter. It was autumn, formally, but Ronny hated gradations.”
― Nicola Barker, Wide Open: Winner of the IMPAC Dublin Literary Award for Dark Contemporary Fiction

“He saw the guiding light in his life as a palpable indifference. A supreme, a superb, a spectacular indifference. Ronny shrugged. "If you ate less you might feel better about things. The way I see it, the less you eat, the less energy you have to expend on unnecessary stuff. If you were hungry you probably wouldn't be the slightest bit interested in what I did or didn't do.”
― Nicola Barker, Wide Open