Swimming Home Quotes

“She was not a poet. She was a poem.”
― Deborah Levy, Swimming Home

“Life is only worth living because we hope it will get better and we'll all get home safely. But you tried and you did not get home safely. You did not get home at all.”
― Deborah Levy, Swimming Home

“As much as I try to make the past keep still and mind its manners, it moves and murmurs with me through every day.”
― Deborah Levy, Swimming Home

“... to be forceful was not the same as being powerful and to be gentle was not the same as being fragile...”
― Deborah Levy, Swimming Home

“It is dishonest to give me a poem and pretend to want my opinion when what you really want are reasons to live.”
― Deborah Levy, Swimming Home

“The young woman was a window waiting to be climbed through. A window that she guessed was a little broken anyway.”
― Deborah Levy, Swimming Home

“I have never got a grip on when the past begins or where it ends, but if cities map the past with statues made from bronze forever frozen in one dignified position, as much as I try to make the past keep still and mind its manners, it moves and murmurs with me through every day.”
― Deborah Levy, Swimming Home

“This was the rearranged space of yesterday.”
― Deborah Levy, Swimming Home

“Life ia only worth living because we hope it will get better and we'll al get home safely.”
― Deborah Levy, Swimming Home

“They would be enchanted beginners all over again, ... . That was the best thing to be in life.”
― Deborah Levy, Swimming Home

“I can't stand THE DEPRESSED. It's like a job. It's the only thing they work hard at. Oh good my depression is very well today. Oh good today I have another mysterious symptom and I will have another one tomorrow. The DEPRESSED are full of hate and bile and when they are not having panic attacks they are writing poems. What do they want their poems to DO? Their depression in the most VITAL thing about them. Their poems are threats. ALWAYS threats. There is no sensation keener or more active than their pain. They give nothing back except their depression. It's just another utility. Like electricity and water and gas and democracy. They could not survive without it.”
― Deborah Levy, Swimming Home

“We're kissing in the rain.' Her voice was hard and soft at the same time. Like the velvet armchairs. Like the black rain inked on his hand.”
― Deborah Levy, Swimming Home

“He lifted his arm that had been resting on her shoulders and gazed at the words she had written on his hand. He had been branded as cattle are branded to show whom they belong to. The cold mountain air stung his lips. She was driving too fast on this road that had once been a forest. Early humans had lived in it. They studied fire and the movement of the sun. They read the clouds and the moon and tried to understand the human mind His father had tried to melt him into a Polish forest when he was five years old. He knew he must leave no trace or trail of his existence because he must never find his way home. That was what his father had told him. You cannot come home. This was not something possible to know but he had to know it all the same”
― Deborah Levy, Swimming Home

“I can't stand THE DEPRESSED. It's like a job, it's the only thing they work hard at.”
― Deborah Levy, Swimming Home

“play with whatever the day brought in.”
― Deborah Levy, Swimming Home

“Couples were always keen to return to the task of trying to destroy their lifelong partners while pretending to have their best interests at heart.”
― Deborah Levy, Swimming Home

“Life is only worth living because we hope it will get better and we'll all get home safely.”
― Deborah Levy, Swimming Home

“To use the language of a war correspondent, which was, she knew, what Isabel Jacobs happened to be, she would have to say thay Kitty Finch was smiling at her with hostile intent.”
― Deborah Levy, Swimming Home

“Has anyone ever actually told you how up yourself you are?”
― Deborah Levy, Swimming Home

“Next year he would suggest they hire a chalet on the edge of an icy fjord in Norway, as far away from the Jacobs family as possible.”
― Deborah Levy, Swimming Home

“...knowledge would not necessarily serve them, nor would it make them happy. There was a chance it would instead throw light on visions they did not want to see.”
― Deborah Levy, Swimming Home

“...she had gone too far into the unhappiness of the world to start all over again.”
― Deborah Levy, Swimming Home

“Life is only worth living because we hope it will get better and we’ll all get home safely.”
― Deborah Levy, Swimming Home

“The truth was her husband had the final word because he wrote words and then he put full stops at the end of them. She knew this, but what did his wife know?”
― Deborah Levy, Swimming Home

“She had to admit he was quite handsome even though he was repulsive.”
― Deborah Levy, Swimming Home

“British literary landscape,”
― Deborah Levy, Swimming Home

“عندما أقبل ابنتي قبل أن تنام في الليل، وأتمنى لها أحلاما سعيدة فهي تفهم أن أمنيتي لها لطيفة، لكن تعلم أيضا كما يعلم جميع الأطفال أنه من المستحيل أن يملي عليهم الآباء أنواع أحلامهم.”
― Deborah Levy, Swimming Home

“To do the things she had chosen to do in the world, she risked forfeiting her place as a wife and mother, a bewildering place haunted by all that had been imagined for her if she chose to sit in it.”
― Deborah Levy, Swimming Home

“She was not ready to go home and start imitating someone she used to be.”
― Deborah Levy, Swimming Home

“He glanced drowsily at Laura and Mitchell eating their strawberries in the sunshine and found himself about to fall asleep. It was an odd sensation, 'to find himself' about to fall into sleep. As if he could find himself anywhere at any time.”
― Deborah Levy, Swimming Home