Swimming Lessons Quotes

“Writing does not exist unless there is someone to read it, and each reader will take something different from a novel, from a chapter, from a line.”
― Claire Fuller, Swimming Lessons

“It’s about believing two opposing ideas in your head at the same time: hope and grief.”
― Claire Fuller, Swimming Lessons

“It’s difficult to live with both hope and grief.”
― Claire Fuller, Swimming Lessons

“Flora would have liked to ask her parents why the words ‘to father’ have such a different meaning from the words ‘to mother’.”
― Claire Fuller, Swimming Lessons

“Fiction is about readers. Without readers there is no point in books, and therefore they are as important as the author, perhaps more important.”
― Claire Fuller, Swimming Lessons

“May your bones be washed by the saltwater, your spirit return to the sand and the love we have for you be forever around us.”
― Claire Fuller, Swimming Lessons

“The house had always been full of books, far too many for one person to get through in a lifetime. Her father didn't collect them to read, to own first editions or to keep those signed by the author; Gil collected them for the handwritten marginalia and doodles that marked the pages, for the forgotten ephemera used as bookmarks. Every time Flora came home he would show her his new discoveries: left-behind photographs, postcards and letters, bail slips, receipts, handwritten recipes and drawings, valentines and tickets, sympathy cards, excuse notes to teachers; bits of paper with which he could piece together other people's lives, other people who had read the same books he held and who had marked their place.”
― Claire Fuller, Swimming Lessons

“like a photograph album flicked through by a distant relative, oohing and aahing at the happy times without knowing about the hundreds of pictures that had been discarded.”
― Claire Fuller, Swimming Lessons

“A book becomes a living thing only when it interacts with a reader.”
― Claire Fuller, Swimming Lessons

“and all books are created by the reader.”
― Claire Fuller, Swimming Lessons

“Everyone needs a place to escape to, even if it’s only inside their head.”
― Claire Fuller, Swimming Lessons

“Laid out before her was a woven cloth of purple heath and gorse rolling down to the glittering sea, and in the distance the rooftops of Spanish Green.”
― Claire Fuller, Swimming Lessons

“When you return, we'll take armfuls of books out to the unmown lawn and lie on a blanket with them spread about us. We will read to each other and watch the gulls wheeling above. If we are shat upon, you will teach me to swear in Norwegian.”
― Claire Fuller, Swimming Lessons

“Fiction is about readers. Without readers there is no point in books, and therefore they are as important as the author, perhaps more important. But often the only way to see what a reader thought, how they lived when they were reading, is to examine what they left behind.”
― Claire Fuller, Swimming Lessons

“Writing does not exist unless there is someone to read it, and each reader will take something different from the novel, from a chapter, from a line...a book becomes a living thing only when it interacts with a reader. What do you think happens in the gaps-the unsaid things, everything you don't write? The reader fills them from their own imagination. But does each reader fill them how you want, or in the same way? Of course not.”
― Claire Fuller, Swimming Lessons

“But often the only way to see what a reader thought, how they lived when they were reading, is to examine what they left behind.”
― Claire Fuller, Swimming Lessons

“Gil collected them for the handwritten marginalia and doodles that marked the pages, for the forgotten ephemera used as bookmarks.”
― Claire Fuller, Swimming Lessons

“It’s women who underline and write words in the margins. Men doodle and scribble obscenities.”
― Claire Fuller, Swimming Lessons

“You existed for me before I’d ever set eyes on you. I knew I’d find you; it was only a matter of waiting.”
― Claire Fuller, Swimming Lessons

“Flora is like a car, she wants everything on her terms. If I’d asked her to come with me for a swim, she’d probably have said no. Occasionally she’ll allow me to stroke and pet her, but if I put out an uninvited hand she’ll often scratch and claw, and run away.”
― Claire fuller, Swimming Lessons

“Writing does not exist unless there is someone to read it, and each reader will take something different from a novel, a chapter, from a line. A book becomes a living thing only when it interacts with a reader.”
― Claire Fuller, Swimming Lessons

“The first thing you ever said to me was "What's your name?" I remember thinking that your voice had been made for bedtime radio.”
― Claire Fuller, Swimming Lessons