Penance Quotes

“Get off your high horse bitch youre literally reading school shooter fanfic.”
― Eliza Clark, Penance

“Do you know what happened to her already? Did you catch it in the papers? Are you local? Did you know her? Did you see it on the internet? Did some website the trawls local news for the worst details of true crimes bring her to your attention? Did you see the article about her, buried in the chum box of an already disreputable website? Did you see the red-headed stock image model juxtaposed against an edited charred corpse, captioned, "You won't believe what they did to her?" Did you listen to a podcast? Did the hosts make jokes? Do you have a dark sense of humour? Did that make it okay? Or were they sensitive about it? Did they coo in the right places? Did they give you a content warning? Did you skip ahead? Did you see pictures? Did you look for them?”
― Eliza Clark, Penance

“And kids, they're very instinctual, they're very primitive, in a lot of ways. And they can smell difference on you.”
― Eliza Clark, Penance

“Even short lives are complex and rich. Even dead children are full of contradictions and flaws and mysteries that will never be fully understood or solved.”
― Eliza Clark, Penance

“I don’t know, reading about this horrible stuff, knowing that life went on and the world just kept on turning. It was really fucking depressing but it also ... it was quite comforting, as well. In like, a bleak way.”
― Eliza Clark, Penance

“Proof every Andrew Lloyd Webber stan is a fucking serial killer.”
― Eliza Clark, Penance

“She hated sickly sweet little girls; she hated watching mothers henpeck their daughters into submission, while their horrid little boys ran around pulling hair and picking noses. She craved balance. She wanted to live in a world where no one pulled hair unpunished, but every child was free to pick their nose at least a little bit.”
― Eliza Clark, Penance

“And now we’re back where we began, aren’t we? Back at the end of the story. They set the fire. They drive to McDonald’s. The fire burns out. Joni crawls from the ashes and onto the beach. She staggers into the hotel. Arrests. Limited coverage. Cult status. Podcasts. Reddit threads. Chumbox articles. And now, me, here, writing this. You reading it.”
― Eliza Clark, Penance

“I really think hell is real,' said Dolly. 'But I think we make it. I think people create tiny hells. Little pocket dimensions, little hell dimensions.”
― Eliza Clark, Penance

“But the tone of all this – all this “local character” stuff – took a turn when the donkey stranglings started.”
― Eliza Clark, Penance

“The snake has eaten its own tail.”
― Eliza Clark, Penance

“Gniew, jaki czuła, był bezkształtny i ogólnikowy; ciche brzęczenie skierowane na nic i na wszystko jednocześnie. (...) Nie miała żadnych uczuciowych rywalek, na które mogłaby skierować swoją furię; tak samo jak nikogo za bardzo nienawidziła, tak też raczej nikogo specjalnie nie lubiła. Nic nie wzbudzało w niej wyjątkowo silnych uczuć. Czasami zastanawiała się, czy jest psychopatką. Ciągle to guglowała i usiłowała dopasować diagnozę do siebie. Ale była zbyt smutna, za bardzo bojaźliwa i zachowywała się zbyt grzecznie, żeby być psychopatką. Była po prostu kolejną dość mocno przygnębioną nastolatką z klasy średniej. (...) Jedną z milionów innych smętnych dziewczyn, które nie mają żadnych prawdziwych problemów poza niejasnym niepokojem egzystencjalnym.”
― Eliza Clark, Penance

“feminist literature podcast The Cliterati,”
― Eliza Clark, Penance

“French sociologist Roger Caillois defines ‘play’ as an act which is ‘(1) free, (2) separate, (3) uncertain, (4) unproductive, (5) regulated, and (6) fictive’. Play is something which can be corrupted: ‘any contamination by ordinary life runs the risk of corrupting and destroying its very nature’. The boundaries between real life and play are blurred, and the purity of the act of play is corrupted by the mundanity of everyday life. It ceases to be play.”
― Eliza Clark, Penance

“There’s a bit of you that’s always a teenager, isn’t there? It’s the most traumatic time of loads of people’s lives, and . . . even the most mentally healthy and put-together adults are still . . . there.”
― Eliza Clark, Penance

“And kids, they’re very instinctual, they’re very primitive, in a lot of ways. And they can smell difference on you.”
― Eliza Clark, Penance

“The children were unkind to her. Probably not especially unkind, but little Violet was so unused to unkindness that it ruined her a little.”
― Eliza Clark, Penance

“She was never self-conscious of her size until the other girls made sure she was.”
― Eliza Clark, Penance

“I know I sound mental, but I think that’s what people want to see. It’s so horrible, what happened to her is so horrible, I reckon they think it’s the only appropriate reaction. Nobody understands how anything so awful could happen, so nobody knows how to act, or how I should act, or how I could possibly be coping. They all have their little fucking ideas about what I’m supposed to do, or who I’m supposed to be. So I can’t do anything right for anyone. They don’t understand how I could go on, and thinking about it makes them sad, so they just want me to go away. To move out of the house, or to just die, so they don’t have to think about me, or what happened to Joni anymore. Do I sound mental? I sound mental, don’t I? I’ve sounded mental since it”
― Eliza Clark, Penance

“Logically knowing that she couldn’t be there, then feeling like I shouldn’t be here either. If she wasn’t here, I should be where she was.”
― Eliza Clark, Penance

“Dawn took her to a GP and was told that some babies simply did not like to be babies. And that was that. No rash, no toothache, no terrible but identifiable internal problem; just some vague existential dread. She did not like being a baby. She was so distressed by being a baby that she screamed with the horror of it. She hated being a baby so much she couldn’t sleep. Dawn told me that she felt cruel for bringing the child into the world; she resented the baby for resenting being alive so much.”
― Eliza Clark, Penance

“You managed to write four perfectly accurate books prior to this. Four books with no 'artistic licence'.'
'And perhaps they weren't as good!”
― Eliza Clark, Penance

“She was bright, but a tad lazy – social and easily distracted.”
― Eliza Clark, Penance