Arctic Summer Quotes

“No emotion was supposed to cross the great divide of class. Affection could erase all hierarchy; in this was the danger, and the delight.”
― Damon Galgut, Arctic Summer

“Even in one’s most physical moments, the real craving was for love.”
― Damon Galgut, Arctic Summer

“There were some, naturally, who would understand, and he wrote for them, or for himself. Anyhow, some idealised reader who would accept everything, and forgive.”
― Damon Galgut, Arctic Summer

“What he sensed more than anything else was kindness – a kindness of a human and immediate sort. It was surprising how very radical this simple emotion could be.”
― Damon Galgut, Arctic Summer

“That echo. It played in his head at unexpected moments, repeating certain sounds and making nonsense of them. But could you remember an echo? Memory itself was like another kind of echo, everything duplicating endlessly, in shadow versions of itself.”
― Damon Galgut, Arctic Summer

“To be honest and to be fair were not always the same thing.”
― Damon Galgut, Arctic Summer

“The only defence against raw, naked feeling was reason. Understanding made sadness easier to bear.”
― Damon Galgut, Arctic Summer

“There was something humiliating, too, in a display of grief when the relationship had been unwitnessed. No, this was to be a private suffering, like lust or literature, lived out mostly in his dreams.”
― Damon Galgut, Arctic Summer

“Il avait plutôt l'impression d'être tombé dans l'amour, avec Mohammed : dans un petit espace circulaire au centre même de son existence, où rien, pratiquement, ne faisait de l'ombre.”
― Damon Galgut, Arctic Summer

“L'objet de leur discussion aperçut alors son reflet, comme elles auraient pu elles aussi le voir, dans un miroir à cadre doré sur le mur opposé : une silhouette étrange, contorsionnée, une jambe enroulée sur l'autre, la main droite serrée dans la gauche, et une tête hirsute inclinée sur le côté. L'angle de vue effaçait le reste de la pièce et il donnait l'impression d'être seul au centre d'une immensité blanche. Un paysage de neige givré sur lequel tombaient les rayons du soleil. L'été arctique : rien ne bouge, rien ne vit et le ciel est dégagé.
Ce n'est pas moi, pensa-t-il. Et pourtant, si. Tout était faux à propos de cet homme. Jamais son reflet ne montrerait la vérité qu'il avait en vie de crier tout haut.
(…) Alors qu'il avait cru pouvoir crier, une toute petite voix s'échappa de lui. ‘J'ai aimé, leur dit-il. Ce qui signifie que j'ai vécu. A ma manière.’ Il n'y avait rien à ajouter.”
― Damon Galgut, Arctic Summer

“His own sterility was apparent to him and would soon, he felt sure, be visible to others. Curiously, he didn’t feel depressed at the prospect. He was almost intrigued by the idea of giving in to his oddness, turning into one of those remote, ineffectual creatures, so warped by their solitude that they became distasteful to normal people.”
― Damon Galgut, Arctic Summer

“(it) was like being under the sea, in aquamarine light. However bright or loud your surroundings, you were somehow always alone.”
― Damon Galgut, Arctic Summer

“(...) showed him strangenesses in his own nature that partly alarmed him, but partly pleased him too – because they confirmed what he hoped about himself: that he did not belong, not quite, in the deadly properness around him. No, there was a whole aspect of his character that was an unmentioned half-brother to his civilised side: drunk and disorderly and primitive, closer to the woods than the city.”
― Damon Galgut, Arctic Summer

“I am happy to see you, Masood.”
“Happy? Happy? What a pale, pathetic English word. You must not be ‘happy’ to see me. No, you must be enraptured, transported! You must be overjoyed. I have no use for ‘happy’.”
― Damon Galgut, Arctic Summer

“Why did people believe it was only the flesh that binds?”
― Damon Galgut, Arctic Summer

“It is always an attractive moment when curiosity takes hold.”
― Damon Galgut, Arctic Summer

“What did love mean if it was doled out so carelessly, with no thought of consequence?”
― Damon Galgut, Arctic Summer

“He didn’t depend so much on the good opinion of others to feel complete. Nor did he expect happiness as his right any longer; he knew it was only for the strong.”
― Damon Galgut, Arctic Summer

“There was no reason why he should not lift the veil aside.
Well, there was Lily. He could imagine his mother’s face if he told her he was giving up meat and alcohol and going to live off the land and make sandals. Not to mention homogenic love. The veil might be thin, but in some cases it was insurmountable.”
― Damon Galgut, Arctic Summer

“Fire and water and smoke and incense and chanting and bells and butter and blood: this was a language whose syllables were translated into physical terms; a language of the elements. It was a language that he hoped might speak to him one day.”
― Damon Galgut, Arctic Summer

“The Indians were inside their bodies, he decided, in a way that the British were not. His own flesh impeded his spirit.”
― Damon Galgut, Arctic Summer