Tin Man Quotes

“And I wonder what the sound of a heart breaking might be. And I think it might be quiet, unperceptively so, and not dramatic at all. Like the sound of an exhausted swallow falling gently to earth.”
― Sarah Winman, Tin Man

“There's something about first love, isn't there? she said. It's untouchable to those who played no part in it. But it's the measure of all that follows.”
― Sarah Winman, Tin Man

“I haven't cried. But sometimes I feel as if my veins are leaking, as if my body is overwhelmed, as if I'm drowning from the inside.”
― Sarah Winman, Tin Man

“Men and boys should be capable of beautiful things.”
― Sarah Winman, Tin Man

“I try hard to be liked, I always have. I try hard to lessen people’s pain. I try hard because I can’t face my own.”
― Sarah Winman, Tin Man

“And I remember thinking, how cruel it was that our plans were out there somewhere. Another version of our future, out there somewhere, in perpetual orbit.”
― Sarah Winman, Tin Man

“Everything was real, not perfect. And yet that's what had made it so perfect.”
― Sarah Winman, Tin Man

“And sometimes, when the day loomed grey, I'd sit at my desk and remember the heat of that summer. I’d remember the smells of tuberose that were carried by the wind, and the smell of octopus cooking on stinking griddles. I’d remember the sound of our laughter and the sound of a doughnut seller, and I’d remember the red canvas shoes I lost in the sea, and the taste of pastis and the taste of his skin, and a sky so blue it would defy anything else to be blue again. And I’d remember my love for a man that almost made everything possible.”
― Sarah Winman, Tin Man

“I said to him that just because you can’t remember, doesn’t mean the past isn’t out there. All those precious moments are still there somewhere.”
― Sarah Winman, Tin Man

“Think about it, I said. We all had to come out of the dark to sing.”
― Sarah Winman, Tin Man

“We love who we love, don’t we?”
― Sarah Winman, Tin Man

“But it was my humanness that led me to seek, that's all. Led us all to seek. A simple need to belong somewhere.”
― Sarah Winman, Tin Man

“I’m broken by my need for others. By the erotic dance of memory that pounces when loneliness falls.”
― Sarah Winman, Tin Man

“..How the numbness in my fingertips travelled to my heart and I never even knew it.

I had crushes, I had lovers, I had orgasms. My trilogy of desire, I liked to call it, but I'd no great love after him, not really. Love and sex became separated by a wide river and one the ferryman refused to cross.”
― Sarah Winman, Tin Man

“..And now look. Life changes in ways we can never imagine. Walls come down and people are free. You wait, she says.”
― Sarah Winman, Tin Man

“Autumn knocks on the window. I pull back the sliding doors and let it in. Lights from the meat market flicker and car lights streak the gloom. Overhead the pulse of aeroplane wings replaces the stars. The flat is quiet. This is loneliness.”
― Sarah Winman, Tin Man

“And Michael reached for Dora’s hand and they laughed and Ellis remembered how grateful he was that Michael’s care was instinctive and natural because he could never be that way with her. He was constantly on the lookout for the last good-bye.”
― Sarah Winman, Tin Man

“company at any age is good.”
― Sarah Winman, Tin Man

“/A weekend toward the end of September, the bell above the door rang and there he was in the shop. Same old feeling in my guts.
I’ll go if you want me to, he said.
I smiled, I was so fucking happy to see him.
You’ve only just got here, you twat, I said. Now give us a hand with this, and he took the other end of the trestle table and moved it over to the wall. Pub? I said.
He grinned. And before I could say anything else he put his arms around me. And everything he couldn’t say in our room in France was said in that moment. I know, I said. I know. I’d already accepted I wasn’t the key to unlock him.
She’d come later.
It took a while to acknowledge the repercussions of that time. How the numbness in my fingertips traveled to my heart and I never even knew it.
I had crushes, I had lovers, I had orgasms. My trilogy of desire, I liked to call it, but I’d no great love after him, not really. Love and sex became separated by a wide river and one the ferryman refused to cross. The psychiatrist liked that analogy. I watched him write it down. Chuckle, chuckle, his pen across the page.”
― Sarah Winman, Tin Man

“That was the world he inhabited between the time of it happening and the time of him knowing. A brief window, not yet shattered, when music still stirred, when beer still tasted good, when dreams could still be hatched at the sight of a plane careering across a perfect summer sky.”
― Sarah Winman, Tin Man

“I struggle between my tears, and can do little else but make for the side. I rest till I’m calm and my breathing has settled. I lift myself out and sit by the edge of the pool with a towel around my shoulders. And I wonder what the sound of a heart breaking might be. And I think it might be quiet, unperceptively so, and not dramatic at all. Like the sound of an exhausted swallow falling gently to earth.”
― Sarah Winman, Tin Man

“It was still a world of shyness and fear, and those shared moments were everything: my loneliness masquerading as sexual desire. But it was my humanness that led me to seek, that’s all. Led us all to seek. A simple need to belong somewhere.”
― Sarah Winman, Tin Man

“It would be as if the sun itself rose every morning on that wall, showering the silence of their mealtimes with the shifting emotion of light.”
― Sarah Winman, Tin Man

“She would suddenly stop in front of that painting, and whatever she was saying or doing at that precise moment came to an abrupt halt in the presence of the colour yellow. It was her solace. Her inspiration and confessional.”
― Sarah Winman, Tin Man

“We haven’t got to the Sunflowers yet, said Michael.
No, we haven’t, she said. You’re right. OK, so Vincent hoped to set up an artists’ studio down there in the South because he was keen to have friends and like-minded people around him.
I think he was probably lonely, said Michael. What with the ear thing and the darkness.
I think he was, too, said Dora. 1888 was the year, and he was waiting for another artist to join him, a man called Paul Gauguin. People say that, in all probability, he painted the Sunflowers as decoration for Gaugain’S room. Did lots of versions of them too, not just this. It’s a lovely thought, though, isn’t it? Some people say it’s not true but I like to think it is. Painting flowers as a sign of friendship and welcome. Men and boys should be capable of beautiful things.
Never forget that, you two, she said, and she disappeared into the kitchen.”
― Sarah Winman, Tin Man

“He remembered how Michael had bragged that he could swim, but he couldn't. He said that he'd read everything about swimming, firmly believing he could trip across words, like stepping stones, to the bank of experience. But he couldn't.”
― Sarah Winman, Tin Man

“float before I could swim. Ellis never believed it was called Dead-Man’s Float, thought I’d made it up. I told him it was a survival position after a long exhausting journey. How apt. All I see below is blue light. Peaceful and eternal. I’m holding my breath until my body throbs as one pulse. I roll over and suck in a deep lungful of warm air. I look up at the starry starry night. The sound of water in and out of my ears, and beyond this human shell, the sound of cicadas fills the night. I dreamt of my mother. It was an image, that’s all, and a fleeting one, at that. She was faded with age, like a discarded offcut on the studio floor. In this dream, she didn’t speak, just stepped out of the shadows, a reminder that we are the same, her and me, cut from the same bruised cloth. I understand how she got up one day and left, how instinctively she trusted the compulsion to flee. The rightness of that action. We are the same, her and me. She walked out when I was eight. Never came back. I remember being collected from school by our neighbour Mrs Deakin, who bought me sweets on the way home and let me play with a dog for as long as I wanted. Inside the house, my father was sitting at the table, drinking. He was holding a sheet of blue writing paper covered in black words, and he said, Your mother’s gone. She said she’s sorry. A sheet of writing paper covered in words and just two for me. How was that possible? Her remnant life was put in bags and stored in the spare room at the earliest opportunity. Stuffed in, not folded – clothes brushes, cosmetics all thrown in together, awaiting collection from the Church. My mother had taken only what she could carry. One rainy afternoon, when my father had gone next door to fix a pipe, I emptied the bags on to the floor and saw my mother in every jumper and blouse and skirt I held up. I used to watch her dress and she let me. Sometimes, she asked my opinion about colours or what suited her more, this blouse or that blouse? And she’d follow my advice and tell me how right I was. I took off my clothes and put on a skirt first, then a blouse, a cardigan, and slowly I became her in miniature. She’d taken her good shoes, so I slipped on a pair of mid-height heels many sizes too big, of course, and placed a handbag on my arm. I stood in front of the mirror, and saw the infinite possibilities of play. I strutted, I”
― Sarah Winman, Tin Man

“The air fizzed. I remember telling this to Annie once, and Ellis couldn’t remember a bloody thing. He’s so disappointing at times. Couldn’t remember the fishing boats, or Francoise Hardy, or how warm the evening was, and how the air fizzed -
Fizzed? he said.
Yes, I said. Fizzed with possibly or maybe excitement. I said to him that just because you can’t remember doesn’t mean the past isn’t out there. All those precious moments are still there somewhere.
I think he’s embarrassed by the word precious, said Annie.
Maybe, I said, looking at him.”
― Sarah Winman, Tin Man

“But when she had entered the gallery room, the storm shutters around her heart flew open and she knew immediately that this was the life she wanted: Freedom. Possibility. Beauty.”
― Sarah Winman, Tin Man

“I rest till I’m calm and my breathing has settled. I lift myself out and sit by the edge of the pool with a towel around my shoulders. And I wonder what the sound of a heart breaking might be. And I think it might be quiet, unperceptively so, and not dramatic at all. Like the sound of an exhausted swallow falling gently to earth.”
― Sarah Winman, Tin Man