The Bricks that Built the Houses Quotes

“She flicks her words like lit matches. They drop delicately, burning.”
― Kate Tempest, The Bricks that Built the Houses

“It's on us, the people at the bottom to fix things for ourselves even though it's us who suffer the decisions of the people at the top the most”
― Kate Tempest, The Bricks that Built the Houses

“Everybody’s looking for their tiny piece of meaning. Some fleeting, perfect thing that might make them more alive.”
― Kate Tempest, The Bricks that Built the Houses

“Winter laid her solemn hands across the city and stroked all the colours out of the sky”
― Kate Tempest, The Bricks that Built the Houses

“It gets to painful. You give too much, they take too much, or not enough, and suddenly you find yourself emptied out and open handed, grabbing for some more.”
― Kate Tempest, The Bricks that Built the Houses

“She is dark browed, sarcastic and occasionally mean spirited. A knife amongst all this flesh, The kind of woman who starts chaos in strangers all day.”
― Kate Tempest, The Bricks that Built the Houses

“He stretches his legs out underneath the table and checks Facebook on his phone. It tells him things he doesn’t need to know about people he hasn’t seen in years. He absorbs their aggressively worded opinions and quasi-political hate-speak. He sees a photograph of his ex-girlfriend with her new boyfriend smiling at a picnic and he realises, with a strange cascade of emptiness, that she is pregnant and wearing an engagement ring. The comments are jubilant. He reads every word before he forces himself to put his phone down. A loneliness descends. He feels its familiar talons grabbing him violently out of his chair and hanging him, swinging, up by the ceiling. Pete”
― Kate Tempest, The Bricks that Built the Houses

“John rejected the idea that 'troubled' kids were to blame for their troubles. If young boys stole or stabbed each other over debts, or felt compelled to arm themselves when they walked the streets, it was not even considered that it might be the fault of the social structures they lived under.”
― Kate Tempest, The Bricks that Built the Houses

“Becky smiles and all the streets in Harry's heart are on fire, all the windows in all the houses smash at the same time. A tidal wave charges in and puts the fires out and the water floods the houses and comes pouring through the broken windows, carrying debris on its waves.”
― Kate Tempest, The Bricks that Built the Houses

“People are killing for gods again. Money is killing us all.”
― Kate Tempest, The Bricks that Built the Houses

“Life could be hideous or beautiful, often both, but never mediocre”
― Kate Tempest, The Bricks that Built the Houses

“Like you got two lives. And which one's real? Which one's actually the life your living?”
― Kate Tempest, The Bricks that Built the Houses

“They were as close and as distant as any family.”
― Kate Tempest, The Bricks that Built the Houses

“Eventually, Leon's voice limps from his chest and staggers out of his mouth.”
― Kate Tempest, The Bricks that Built the Houses

“It was the unbearable violence of life that bread the unbearable violence in life.”
― Kate Tempest, The Bricks that Built the Houses

“But here they are, leaving the stress and shit food and endless misunderstandings. Leaving. The jobcentre, the classroom, the pub, the gym, the car park, the flat, the filth, the TV, the constant swiping of newsfeeds, the hoover, the toothbrush, the laptop bag, the expensive hair product that makes you feel better inside, the queue for the cash machine, the cinema, the bowling alley, the phone shop, the guilt, the absolute nothingness that never stops chasing, the pain of seeing a person grow into a shadow. The people’s faces twisting into grimaces again, losing all their insides in the gutters, clutching lovers till the breath is faint and love is dead, wet cement and spray paint, the kids are watching porn and drinking Monster. Watch the city fall and rise again through mist and bleeding hands. Keep holding on to power-ballad karaoke hits. Chase your talent. Corner it, lock it in a cage, give the key to someone rich and tell yourself you’re staying brave. Tip your chair back, stare into the eyes of someone hateful that you’ll take home anyway. Tell the world you’re staying faithful. Nothing’s for you but it’s all for sale, give until your strength is frail and when it’s at its weakest, burden it with hurt and secrets. It’s all around you screaming paradise until there’s nothing left to feel. Suck it up, gob it, double-drop it. Pin it deep into your vein and try for ever to get off it. Now close your eyes and stop it. But it never stops. They”
― Kate Tempest, The Bricks that Built the Houses

“- "Who the fuck is this Harry charakter?" "Superwoman, by all accounts.”
― Kate Tempest, The Bricks that Built the Houses

“Everything is killing him and yet his life just keeps on dragging; the morning comes and here he is, awake again. Alive.”
― Kate Tempest, The Bricks that Built the Houses

“One man's flash of lightning, ripping through the air, is another's passing glare. Hardly there.”
― Kate Tempest, The Bricks that Built the Houses

“Some fleeting, perfect thing that might make them more alive”
― Kate Tempest, The Bricks that Built the Houses

“Silence approaches the table like an overeager waiter. Hovers around making everyone feel looked at.”
― Kate Tempest, The Bricks that Built the Houses

“Becky tilts her chin upwards, watches the cold sun bouncing off the windows in the tops of the buildings, dripping its yolk across pale stone and glass.”
― Kate Tempest, The Bricks that Built the Houses

“His hair was black as onyx and his smile wrapped itself around anyone who saw it.”
― Kate Tempest, The Bricks that Built the Houses