A Spell of Winter Quotes

“You live in the past,’ Kate said. ‘You live in your grandfather’s time.’ But she was wrong. The past was not something we could live in, because it had nothing to do with life. It was something we lugged about, as heavy as a sack of rotting apples.”
― Helen Dunmore, A Spell of Winter

“You have to keep on with a house, day after day, I think. Heating, cleaning, opening and closing windows, making sounds to fill the silence, cooking and washing up, laundering and polishing. As soon as you stop, there may as well never have been any life at all. A house dies as quickly as a body.”
― Helen Dunmore, A Spell of Winter

“she would have to tell the story of this afternoon to herself over and over until she could make a different shape from it to comfort herself.”
― Helen Dunmore, A Spell of Winter

“skate across the icy sea of oilcloth between me and the bookcase. I kneel up in bed and put on Rob’s coat. Its thick, stiff wool is becoming supple again from the heat of my body night after night. I put the sleeve to my face and”
― Helen Dunmore, A Spell of Winter