The Tell-Tale Heart Quotes

“That was the moment I knew I wouldn’t be here for ever – I mean, here on this earth. It went something like this. Just in case. In case you think we’re finished, we’re nothing, we’re nobody, Fen folk, from another era, people you can’t imagine in your modern life with your train travel and your ebooks and your slick city stuff; we’re the slype of the land at the back of Fen river banks – we’re earth, we’re bog oak, we’re dirt, from long ago, invisible. Still, we’re not finished, no way – you’ll find out. We matter too, you know.”
― Jill Dawson, The Tell-Tale Heart

“That was the moment I knew I wouldn’t be here for ever – I mean, here on this earth. It went something like this. Just in case. In case you think we’re finished, we’re nothing, we’re nobody, Fen folk, from another era, people you can’t imagine in your modern life with your train travel and your ebooks and your slick city stuff; we’re the slype of the land at the back of Fen river banks – we’re earth, we’re bog oak, we’re dirt, from long ago, invisible. Still, we’re not finished, no way – you’ll find out.”
― Jill Dawson, The Tell-Tale Heart

“My ex-wife did once accuse me of treating my own needs as if they were instructions and everyone else’s needs as impediments.”
― Jill Dawson, The Tell-Tale Heart: A Novel

“Why does she always have the moral high ground, what is it about women, always behaving so well and thinking of things we should have thought of first and shaming us?”
― Jill Dawson, The Tell-Tale Heart: A Novel

“It needs time, perspective, to show you that someone might be original.”
― Jill Dawson, The Tell-Tale Heart: A Novel

“(I never crush a relationship dead, I once boasted. Meaning: I always leave something in case I want to pick it up later.)”
― Jill Dawson, The Tell-Tale Heart: A Novel

“Tears make you the villain and the unfeeling one, regardless of what you feel, simply because you can’t produce them yourself. And whatever they say, I know women use them to get their own way:”
― Jill Dawson, The Tell-Tale Heart: A Novel

“Yes. Happiness, anxiety, sadness, anger and disgust. It’s none of those. So it might be . . . wonder.”
― Jill Dawson, The Tell-Tale Heart: A Novel

“You know how I used to joke that your mother had three thousand six hundred and twenty-two feelings and I had the requisite five basic ones which have an evolutionary purpose? Because, quite frankly, most of the time I didn’t know what the bloody hell she was on about? Well, since coming round from surgery I’m finding myself having others, another . . . perhaps the sixth emotion.”
― Jill Dawson, The Tell-Tale Heart: A Novel

“What did that feel like, to be a girl like Helen, unguarded, straightforward, who had allowed me to unpeel her like a mollusc from its shell, only to find that the exposure was devastating? That entrusting yourself entirely to someone can make you want to die? Helen, does it mean anything at all that I'm thinking these thoughts? That I'm able to remember and construct things differently? That for the first time I glimpsed it there from your point of view? Does it mean it's all over for me, for the old me?”
― Jill Dawson, The Tell-Tale Heart