Helen Dunmore > Quotes

“I wish I was away in Ingo
Far across the briny sea
Sailing over deepest waters
Where neither care nor worry trouble me.”
― helen dunmore, Ingo

“In a world without air all you breathe is adventure!”
― Helen Dunmore

“The human longing for story is so powerful, so primitive, that it seems like something not learned, but locked into our genes.”
― Helen Dunmore

“For you where never my blood sister so no more shall I call you little sister”
― Helen Dunmore, The Crossing of Ingo

“They wanted spring, of course they wanted it, more than anything. They longed for sun with every pore of their skin. But spring hurts. If spring can come, if things can be different, how can you bear what your existence has been?”
― Helen Dunmore, The Siege

“We are creatures of story.”
― Helen Dunmore

“He said a fortuneteller had told Mum's fortune once, and after that, she's never gone out on sea again. It was years ago, but she never has. Not once." said Conner
"What did the fortuneteller say?" I asked
"Dad wouldn't tell me. It must have been something really bad though."
"maybe the fortuneteller said that Mum would die by drowning." I suggested.
"Don't be stupid Saph. A fortuneteller wouldn't ever say that to someone. You’re going to drown, that’ll be ten pounds please”
― Helen Dunmore

“They will heal anyway, with time. We...are strong. It takes more...to conquer us.Scars don't matter, little one. They are the marks of the battles we have won.”
― Helen Dunmore

“I don’t know how you humans ever get anything done, you ask so many questions.”
― Helen Dunmore, Ingo

“You're trapped both ways. You do as you are told and you do things that you think will make you big, but all the time you're shrinking.”
― Helen Dunmore, House of Orphans

“You have to keep on with a house, day after day, I think. Heating, cleaning, opening and closing windows, making sounds to fill the silence, cooking and washing up, laundering and polishing. As soon as you stop, there may as well never have been any life at all. A house dies as quickly as a body.”
― Helen Dunmore, A Spell of Winter

“Scars don't matter, little one. They are the marks of the battles we have won.”
― Helen Dunmore, The Deep

“You live in the past,’ Kate said. ‘You live in your grandfather’s time.’ But she was wrong. The past was not something we could live in, because it had nothing to do with life. It was something we lugged about, as heavy as a sack of rotting apples.”
― Helen Dunmore, A Spell of Winter

“You know how the sea grinds down stones into sand, over years and years and years? Nobody ever sees it, it happens so slowly. And then at last the sand is so fine you can sift it in your fingers. Losing Dad is like being worn away by a force that's so powerful nothing could resist it. We are like stones, being changed into something completely different.
If you looked casually at me and Mum and Conor now, you might think we were the same people as we were a year ago, except that we're a year older. But we are not the same people. We've changed where no one can see it, inside our minds and our feelings. I didn't want us to change, but I can't stop it.”
― Helen Dunmore, Ingo

“The word 'personal' is one of my aversions. Personal loan. Personal hygiene. Personal safety. It's only a way of wrapping up bad news that you're in debt, or dirty, or likely to be mugged.”
― Helen Dunmore, Ice Cream

“I've known for a long time about dolphins getting caught in nets and drowning there. But knowing is not the same as seeing it with your own eyes. I feel heavy, sad and responsible.”
― Helen Dunmore, The Crossing of Ingo

“Some things, if you don't do them, they follow you all your life, whispering in your ear," says Granny Carne. She faces me sternly as if she's judging me. "You'll find a dozen good reasons why you pulled back from the Call, and you'll even fool yourself that you had no other choice. But in your bed at night you'll curse yourself for a coward.”
― Helen Dunmore, The Crossing of Ingo

“The fire melts into velvety blackness. There are stars in the blackness, and I want to count them one by one, but they're dancing too fast...”
― Helen Dunmore, Ingo

“I used to think that when a child was born, a parent made a promise to stay with him. Or her. But if there's a promise, it can be broken. That first Matthew Trewhella broke his promises. I wonder if he ever forgot them, or did the torn edges of his promises hurt him to the end of his life?

When someone goes away from you suddenly, without warning, that's what it's like. A rip, a torn edge inside you. I have a torn edge in me, and Dad has a torn edge in him. I'm not sure if those edges will still fit together by the time I find him.”
― Helen Dunmore, Ingo

“The art of hiding in plain sight used to be second nature, and now it has become the whole of him”
― Helen Dunmore

“As long as you two look out for each other, you’ll be safe enough.”
― Helen Dunmore, Ingo

“I think that everything that happens to you stays in you, even if it stays in a part of your mind where you can't find it. That's why you should never try to forget when people urge you to.”
― Helen Dunmore, Ingo

“It must be quite hard when you're a parent and you find out that your children's dreams are nothing like the dreams you've had for them.”
― Helen Dunmore, The Crossing of Ingo

“Be brave. Each time you are brave, it grows easier.”
― Helen Dunmore, The Tide Knot

“It seemed to me that there was a self-interest hidden in the core of all of us, which cooled us when we contemplated any fate which did not touch us directly.”
― Helen Dunmore, Birdcage Walk

“Fear of this order is not an emotion. It is like a virus overwhelming every cell of his body, while his mind struggles to remain clear.”
― Helen Dunmore, The Betrayal

“It's not evil that separates Earth and Ingo; it's difference. But there are plenty who want to make evil out of difference.”
― Helen Dunmore, The Deep

“I did not know what breath meant until she died. It was everything that gave me quickness and life: it was thought, feeling, animation. Without it there was nothing.”
― Helen Dunmore, Birdcage Walk

“The see lifts me again, and carries me away with it.”
― Helen Dunmore, The Tide Knot

“We know everything about the Earth now, except how to keep her alive.”
― Helen Dunmore, The Deep