The Pumpkin Eater Quotes

“I began drinking because the thought that I was drinking gave me a kind of identity: each time I poured myself a brandy in the deserted afternoon I could say to myself 'I am a woman who drinks.”
― Penelope Mortimer, The Pumpkin Eater

“I don't know who I am, I don't know what I'm like, how can I know what I want? I only know that whether I'm good or bad, whether I'm a bitch or not, whether I'm strong or weak or contemptible or a bloody martyr - I mean whether I'm fat or thin, tall or short, because I don't know - I want to be happy.”
― Penelope Mortimer, The Pumpkin Eater

“I want to fly from a window and pour through the air like a wind of love to raise his hair and slide into the palms of his hands.”
― Penelope Mortimer, The Pumpkin Eater

“When I was fourteen I had the world at my feet but somebody didn't do their job properly and allowed me to sin.”
― Penelope Mortimer, The Pumpkin Eater

“I have tried to be honest with you, although I suppose that you would really have been more interested in my not being honest. Some of these things happened, and some were dreams. They were all true, as I understood truth. They are all real, as I understood reality.”
― Penelope Mortimer, The Pumpkin Eater

“But it is arrogance that keeps one alive: the belief that one can choose, that one' choice is important, that one is responsible only to oneself. Without arrogance what would we be?”
― Penelope Mortimer, The Pumpkin Eater

“I was worrying about the milk, about my children falling in love, about the creatures who crawled through the dark towards us, their ancestors, their loving assassins, breathing 'Why?' like a cold wind.”
― Penelope Mortimer, The Pumpkin Eater

“He had already incapacitated me, harried me, cut away most of my illusions and some of my ignorance; he had already so weakened me that I was falling back on myths, words, mysteries to replace what I had lost.”
― Penelope Mortimer, The Pumpkin Eater

“I was alone with myself, and we watched each other with steady, cold, inward eyes: the past and its consequence, the reality and its insubordinate dream.”
― Penelope Mortimer, The Pumpkin Eater

“For one’s past grows to a point where it is longer than one’s future, and then it can become too great a burden.”
― Penelope Mortimer, The Pumpkin Eater

“I have arguments with myself.'
'About what?'
'Between the part of me that believes in things, and the part that doesn't.'
'And which wins?'
'Sometimes one. Sometimes the other.”
― Penelope Mortimer, The Pumpkin Eater

“No se aprende nada lastimando a los demás; solo aprendes cuando te lastiman a ti.”
― Penelope Mortimer, The Pumpkin Eater

“Querida señora Evans, por Dios, venga a enseñarme cómo vivir. No es que lo haya olvidado; es que nunca he sabido. Un útero no es tan importante. Es sólo la cuna de la vida, algo que tira de la luna como si fuera un cometa y hace que el mar suba y baje, suba y baje, la respiración del mundo.”
― Penelope Mortimer, The Pumpkin Eater

“En los sueños no se necesitan paracaídas ni alas: en los sueños puedes volar.”
― Penelope Mortimer, The Pumpkin Eater

“I told him that my father was dead and that to take her mind off it I had told my mother that I was pregnant. I said it had taken her mind off it wonderfully, so far; and that it also happened to be true.”
― Penelope Mortimer, The Pumpkin Eater