A Summer of Drowning Quotes

“All you have to do is choose the right day, the right weather, and you come upon a hidden place in the morning light where time stopped long before you were born”
― John Burnside, A Summer of Drowning

“He was someone who had to live alone, someone who found it difficult to be with others for any length of time, because he only had one mode - that discreet art of withdrawal which had, no doubt, taken him years to perfect. He had no other strategies for getting along with people and, though his colleagues probably saw this as the mark of a gentle, erudite, considerate soul, I was suddenly able to see right through it. Not because I was so very perceptive, but because I was so like him. He had been living in that one mode for so long, he had almost forgotten about it, but I was a near-beginner, and for me it was painfully obvious.”
― John Burnside, A Summer of Drowning

“Today, however, she didn't go looking for urchins or broken shells. She simply walked to the end of the earth and stood a while.”
― John Burnside, A Summer of Drowning

“Non avevo mai avuto l'impressione di crescere all'ombra di mia madre: vivevo nel mio mondo, uno spazio di cui lei aveva delimitato i confini, lasciandomi però libera di riempirlo come meglio credevo. Mia madre viveva come aveva scelto di vivere, e sapevo che il lavoro era la cosa che contava di più per lei, ma questo consentiva anche a me di vivere come volevo e di decidere liberamente cosa contava di più per me...”
― John Burnside, A Summer of Drowning

“..and she had started to relax - but she was relaxing into something terrible, and she was going about the world in a state of complete indifference to whatever might come, a wild girl with dream patterns and faint, dark animals etched on her skin, a creature who had passed beyond fear and was, therefore, beyond saving.”
― John Burnside, A Summer of Drowning

“This girl - this thin, cold child in a hand-me-down cardigan and faded dress - hated me, not for anything I was or had done, but because I existed, in her world, and she didn't want me there.”
― John Burnside, A Summer of Drowning