The Dumb House Quotes

“The trick and the beauty of language is that it seems to order the whole universe, misleading us into believing that we live in sight of a rational space, a possible harmony.”
― John Burnside, The Dumb House

“It's laughable, looking back, to see the processes I went through, pretending to make a reasoned decision. No choice is ever made on the basis of logic; the logic is fabricated around the impulse, the initial desire which is innate and incontrovertible. All the time, I knew where I was going, the elements of my fulfillment or ruin were always present; I only had to work my way into that seam of desire and find the hidden vein of dross or gold. It's not a question of predestination, it's just that free will and destiny are illusions, false opposites, consolations. In the end, they are one and the same: a single process. You choose what you choose and it could not have been otherwise: the choice is destiny. It was there all along, but any alternative you might have considered is an absurd diversion, because it is in your nature to make one choice rather than another. That is identity. To speak of freedom or destiny is absurd because it suggests there is something outside yourself, directing your life, where really it is of the essence: identity, the craftwork of the soul.”
― John Burnside, The Dumb House

“No one could say it was my choice to kill the twins, any more than it was my decision to bring them into the world.”
― John Burnside, The Dumb House

“انسان‌ها تنها گونه‌ی حیوانات‌اند که حاضرند به قیمت شکست برای پیروزی بجنگند.”
― John Burnside, The Dumb House

“If the components of the body were organs and veins and cells, then the components of thought and language were words and grammar.”
― John Burnside, The Dumb House

“This is the nature of social existence. We talk in order to impose limits, to contain the world in a narrow frame.”
― John Burnside, The Dumb House

“This is why the past seems perfect, a time of proportion and order, because it is immersed in speech. For animals, memory might reside as a sensation, a resonance in the nerves, or in the meat of the spine. But for humans, the past cannot be described except in words. It is nowhere else.”
― John Burnside, The Dumb House

“Sometimes, coming home in the early morning like this, I'd imagine things had altered while I was absent: a knife on the bread board that I didn't remember leaving out, a book face down on the table, a cup brimming with tea and dishwater in the sink. The evidence I wanted didn't need to be too elaborate or detailed. I could have constructed an entire afterlife from a half-moon of lemon rind or a small blister of jam on the tablecloth.”
― John Burnside, The Dumb House

“I have always been suspicious of the phrase, the glow of pregnancy, and my suspicions were only confirmed by Lillian's appearance. Instead of a glow, her whole body seemed to become more and more dull, sallow and sickly sweet and vague, like a candle burning out or a line of smudged writing.”
― John Burnside, The Dumb House

“Faced with a real fight, most animals will compromise. If the odds look bad, one or another will back off, or the fight will be discontinued by mutual consent. Humans are the only animals prepared to fight for a Pyrrhic victory.”
― John Burnside, The Dumb House

“couldn’t find it in my heart to believe her death would result in a complete annihilation; I think I accepted her body’s death from the beginning, but there was another part of me that believed her mind, or her spirit, or something else that could not be defined, would never really”
― John Burnside, The Dumb House

“No choice is ever made on the basis of logic; the logic is fabricated around the impulse, the initial desire which is innate and incontrovertible.”
― John Burnside, The Dumb House

“Nothing seems more beautiful to me than language when it creats the impression of order.”
― John Burnside, The Dumb House

“When Mother had told me that animals found quiet, unexposed places to die, I had always imagined they knew they were dying, and accepted it, almost gratefully. Now I saw that this wasn't so at all: they crept into corners in the hope of surviving, they only knew they were weakened and exposed, easy prey, and their instinct was to find a hidden place and try to outlive whatever it was they were suffering. It had been a mistake to imagine they wanted to be alone, to die in peace. Animals have no knowledge of death: for them, death is the unexpected end of life, something they resist by instinct, for no good reason. In that sense their existence has an almost mechanical quality.”
― John Burnside, The Dumb House