Inheritance Quotes

“talked about my worry for the kids. If there was mental illness, would it affect them? Was it already in their genes? He rang his work while we were in the cafe and told them he felt ill and wouldn’t be back in until the morning. So now both of us were shocked. ‘I’m not sure how long”
― Thomas Wymark, Inheritance

“It made me realise how precious time was. But also how cruel and relentless it was too. I wondered why we gave ourselves time. Why we gave ourselves the means to measure it. Hours; minutes; seconds. Days; months; years. Why had we imposed those things on ourselves? They imprisoned us. Reminded us every moment that our lives were unstoppable. We couldn’t pause time. As each measurement passed, our lives decayed. We grew another year older, and another, and another.”
― Thomas Wymark, Inheritance

“Failure to do anything would indeed be failure.”
― Thomas Wymark, Inheritance

“We could act in childish ways, we could revisit childhood places. But we never got back the childhood itself.”
― Thomas Wymark, Inheritance

“even”
― Thomas Wymark, Inheritance

“I wanted to tell him that wasn’t what I’d meant. It wasn’t the feeling of pain I didn’t like, although that was bad enough, it was all the other feelings. All the not me feelings of aggression and anger. I was scared of those feelings. Of what they might mean. And what if they didn’t pass? But they would. I pushed the fear down inside me. Forced it down with my mind and all the strength I had. But that was when the madness started.”
― Thomas Wymark, Inheritance

“I wondered why we gave ourselves time. Why we gave ourselves the means to measure it. Hours; minutes; seconds. Days; months; years. Why had we imposed those things on ourselves? They imprisoned us. Reminded us every moment that our lives were unstoppable. We couldn’t pause time. As each measurement passed, our lives decayed. We grew another year older, and another, and another. I”
― Thomas Wymark, Inheritance

“drifted up from downstairs. He had obviously heard the smash too. His voice was muffled and I couldn’t work out what he was saying. I wondered if he’d bother coming back up again, or just head off to work. The school minibus would be arriving any minute, and he always liked to have left before then. I stood up and filled the sink with cold”
― Thomas Wymark, Inheritance

“should have checked it. I had been so wrapped up in myself since the attack.”
― Thomas Wymark, Inheritance

“person”
― Thomas Wymark, Inheritance

“wasn’t joking. But I couldn’t see how being unconscious for any amount of time constituted”
― Thomas Wymark, Inheritance

“But if only I could go back, just for a little while. There was something so different about childhood. Something wonderful and magical that just went from me as I got older. Why couldn’t I hold onto it? Why had I allowed the world to take it from me? Suddenly I hated the world, real life. Hated the way it took our childhood away from us. I hated that we had to become something other than children, that we had to give up our childness — that was the price we had to pay for becoming an adult. And once we’d paid the price, there wasn’t ever any going back. Not really. We could act in childish ways, we could revisit childhood places. But we never got back the childhood itself. My”
― Thomas Wymark, Inheritance

“It was as though it too was troubled and couldn’t get things quite right.”
― Thomas Wymark, Inheritance

“The realisation of what I could become hit me. First hand I could see how the madness might take me and change me, even more than it already had.”
― Thomas Wymark, Inheritance

“Putting the balance right again. Making the world fair. How can it have been wrong? The noxious toxin of the insanity made her do it.”
― Thomas Wymark, Inheritance

“Desperate to give her the stability she had lacked from her own family.”
― Thomas Wymark, Inheritance

“How hard he tried for my mother.”
― Thomas Wymark, Inheritance

“A yearning for something I could never have.”
― Thomas Wymark, Inheritance

“Alone in the night, quietly ending it all, escaping the pain and the guilt. Finally beating the illness seeping through her mind. I”
― Thomas Wymark, Inheritance

“Draining away then filling up again. Twisting and turning within me, becoming more and more tangled. I”
― Thomas Wymark, Inheritance

“My stomach felt like a washing machine full of emotions, swirling one way then the other.”
― Thomas Wymark, Inheritance

“world had just got too much for her. And I could understand that. Losing my children was the most awful thing. It’s something you never really get over, you know?’ I”
― Thomas Wymark, Inheritance

“There was nothing to fear here, except inaction. Failure to do anything would indeed be failure.”
― Thomas Wymark, Inheritance

“the most horrendous mental illness waiting in my genes. Sleeper cells, primed and ready to activate as soon as they get”
― Thomas Wymark, Inheritance

“My thoughts were spinning away from me so fast I wasn’t sure I could catch any of them.”
― Thomas Wymark, Inheritance

“Every part of me was hidden. Hidden from monsters and ghosts. Hidden from the world.”
― Thomas Wymark, Inheritance

“it hit the surface I had immediately felt the first ripples, but I knew that slowly the pebble was sinking. Deeper and deeper. It would soon hit the bottom where it would lay, irretrievable and unchangeable, forever. It would become part of me. After”
― Thomas Wymark, Inheritance

“Certain words carry with them the full weight of their meaning for all to understand. Cancer; murder; rape; death; insanity. Every right-minded person feels the unease and distress that these words bring whether they have personally experienced them or not. But”
― Thomas Wymark, Inheritance

“pure clarity in my mind”
― Thomas Wymark, Inheritance

“The brush ends were frizzled and black. Neil and Oli surveyed the scene with the utmost seriousness. Abi and I cracked up”
― Thomas Wymark, Inheritance