The Ghost Road Quotes

“We are Craiglockhart's success stories. Look at us. We don't remember, we don't feel, we don't think - at least beyond the confines of what's needed to do the job. By any proper civilized standard (but what does that mean now?) we are objects of horror. But our nerves are completely steady. And we are still alive.”
― Pat Barker, The Ghost Road

“Murder is only killing in the wrong place.”
― Pat Barker, The Ghost Road

“Ghosts everywhere. Even the living were only ghosts in the making. You learned to ration your commitment to them. This moment in this tent already had the quality of remembered experience. Or perhaps he was simply getting old. But then, after all, in trench time he was old. A generation lasted six months, less than that on the Somme, barely twelve weeks.”
― Pat Barker, The Ghost Road

“But I shot the dog myself. I took him into the barn holding on to his collar. He knew something bad was going to happen, and he rolled over on to his back and showed me his puppy-pink tummy and widdled a bit, quite certain these devices for deflecting aggression would work. I tickled him behind his ear and said, 'Sorry, old son. I'm human-we're not like that.”
― Pat Barker, The Ghost Road

“Too close to death ourselves to make a fuss. We economize on grief.”
― Pat Barker, The Ghost Road

“What you're saying is, OK the war isn't being fought for the reasons we're told but it is being fought for a reason. It's not benefiting the people it's supposed to be benefiting but it is benefiting somebody. And I don't believe that, you see. I think things are actually much worse than you think because there isn't any kind of rational justification left. It's become a self-perpetuating system. Nobody benefits. Nobody's in control. Nobody knows how to stop.”
― Pat Barker, The Ghost Road

“privacy sacrificed without intimacy being gained.”
― Pat Barker, The Ghost Road

“Shotfarfet.”
― Pat Barker, The Ghost Road

“We have to die, we don't have to worship it.”
― Pat Barker, The Ghost Road

“From then on the improvement was dramatic, though still the conversations with the dead friend continued, until one morning he awoke crying, and realized he was crying, not only for his own loss but also for his friend's, for the unloved years.”
― Pat Barker, The Ghost Road