“To know what a person has done, and to know who a person is, are very different things.”
― Hannah Kent, quote from Burial Rites
“I can turn to that day as though it were a page in a book. It’s written so deeply upon my mind I can almost taste the ink.”
― Hannah Kent, quote from Burial Rites
“It’s not fair. People claim to know you through the things you’ve done, and not by sitting down and listening to you speak for yourself.”
― Hannah Kent, quote from Burial Rites
“Any woman knows that a thread, once woven, is fixed in place; the only way to smooth a mistake is to let it all unravel.”
― Hannah Kent, quote from Burial Rites
“Blíndur er bóklaus ma∂ur. Blind is a man without a book.”
― Hannah Kent, quote from Burial Rites
“I was worst to the one I loved best.”
― Hannah Kent, quote from Burial Rites
“They will see the whore, the madwoman, the murderess, the female dripping blood into the grass and laughing with her mouth choked with dirt. They will say “Agnes” and see the spider, the witch caught in the webbing of her own fateful weaving. They might see the lamb circled by ravens, bleating for a lost mother. But they will not see me. I will not be there.”
― Hannah Kent, quote from Burial Rites
“The treachery of a friend is worse than that of a foe.”
― Hannah Kent, quote from Burial Rites
“I don't want to be remembered, I want to be here!”
― Hannah Kent, quote from Burial Rites
“They see I’ve got a head on my shoulders, and believe a thinking woman cannot be trusted.”
― Hannah Kent, quote from Burial Rites
“Memories shift like loose snow in a wind, or are a chorale of ghosts all talking over one another. There is only ever a sense that what is real to me is not real to others, and to share a memory with someone is to risk sullying my belief in what has truly happened.”
― Hannah Kent, quote from Burial Rites
“I cannot think of what it was not to love him. To look at him and realise I had found what I had not known I was hungering for. A hunger so deep, so capable of driving me into the night, that it terrified me.”
― Hannah Kent, quote from Burial Rites
“She invented her own language to say what everyone else could only feel.”
― Hannah Kent, quote from Burial Rites
“I remain quiet. I am determined to close myself to the world, to tighten my heart and hold what has not yet been stolen from me. I cannot let myself slip away. I will hold what I am inside, and keep my hands tight around all the things I have seen and heard, and felt.”
― Hannah Kent, quote from Burial Rites
“Of all the names, one is a mistake. One is a nightmare. The stair you miss in the darkness.”
― Hannah Kent, quote from Burial Rites
“It was only later that I suffocated under the weight of his arguments, and his darker thoughts articulated. It was only later that our tongues produced landslides, that we became caught in the cracks between what we said and what we meant, until we could not find each other, did not trust the words in our own mouths.”
― Hannah Kent, quote from Burial Rites
“God has had His chance to free me, and for reasons known to Him alone, He has pinned me to ill fortune, and although I have struggled, I am run through and through with disaster; I am knifed to the hilt with fate.”
― Hannah Kent, quote from Burial Rites
“They will say ‘Agnes’ and see the spider, the witch caught in the webbing of her own fateful weaving. They might see the lamb circled by ravens, bleating for a lost mother. But they will not see me. I will not be there.”
― Hannah Kent, quote from Burial Rites
“Everything I said was taken from me and altered until the story wasn’t my own.”
― Hannah Kent, quote from Burial Rites
“She made mistakes and others made up their minds about her. People around here don’t let you forget your misdeeds. They think them the only things worth writing down.”
― Hannah Kent, quote from Burial Rites
“I preferred to read than talk with the others.”
― Hannah Kent, quote from Burial Rites
“It was not hard to believe a beautiful woman capable of murder, Margret thought.As it says in the sagas, Opt er flago i fogru skinni. A witch often has fair skin.”
― Hannah Kent, quote from Burial Rites
“I prefer a story to a prayer.”
― Hannah Kent, quote from Burial Rites
“Θα χαθείς. Δεν υπάρχει τελευταία κατοικία, δεν υπάρχει κηδεία, δεν υπάρχει ταφή, μόνο ένα ασταμάτητο σκόρπισμα, ένα ταξίδι που σπάει σε χίλια άλλα άσκοπα, ένα ταξίδι που σε πάει παντού χωρίς να σου προσφέρει δρόμο για να γυρίσεις στο σπίτι, αφού δεν υπάρχει σπίτι, υπάρχει μόνο αυτό το κρύο νησί και ο σκοτεινός εαυτός σου ίσα που κρατιέται πάνω του, ώσπου ν' αρχίσεις κι εσύ να ουρλιάζεις σαν τον αέρα και να μιμείσαι τη μοναξιά του”
― Hannah Kent, quote from Burial Rites
“Sleep came to me like a thin tide of water. It would lap against my body but never submerge me.”
― Hannah Kent, quote from Burial Rites
“What else is God good for other than a distraction from the mire we’re all stranded in?”
― Hannah Kent, quote from Burial Rites
“No matter if you tried to do what was best. No matter if your innermost self whispers, ‘I am not as you say!’—how other people think of you determines who you are.”
― Hannah Kent, quote from Burial Rites
“Now comes the darkening sky and a cold wind that passes right through you, as though you are not there, it passes through you as though it does not care whether you are alive or dead, for you will be gone and the wind will still be there...”
― Hannah Kent, quote from Burial Rites
“No doves come from ravens’ eggs”
― Hannah Kent, quote from Burial Rites
“He knew me as one knows the seasons, knows the tide.”
― Hannah Kent, quote from Burial Rites
Hannah Kent
Born place: Adelaide , Australia
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“We must take arms each and every day, perhaps knowing that the battle cannot be entirely won, but fight we must, if only a gentle bout. The smallest effort to win means, at the end of each day, a sort of victory. Remember that pianist who said that if he did not pratice every day he would know, if he did not practice for two days, the critics would know, after three days, his audiences would know.
A variation of this is true for writers. Not that your style, whatever that is, would melt out of shape in those few days.
But what would happen is that the world would catch up with and try to sicken you. If you did not write every day, the poisons would accumulate and you would begin to die, or act crazy, or both.”
― Ray Bradbury, quote from Zen in the Art of Writing
“Curious, sometimes, how one’s thoughts seemed to swing in a kaleidoscope. It happened to me now. A bewildering shuffling and reshuffling of memories, of events. Then the mosaic settled into its true pattern.”
― Agatha Christie, quote from Curtain
“Ben,” Max said, leaning back in his chair with a giant grin. “It’s finally happened.”
I groaned, resting my head on my hand.
“You got your period?” Bennett asked. “Congratulations.”
“No, you twat,” Max said, laughing. “I’m talking about Will. He’s gone arse over tits for a girl.”
― Christina Lauren, quote from Beautiful Player
“Too much balast slows you down.”
― Joanne Harris, quote from Blackberry Wine
“Adults, waiting for tomorrow, move in a present behind which is yesterday or the day before yesterday or at most last week: they don't want to think about the rest. Children don't know the meaning of yesterday, or even of tomorrow, everything is this, now: the street is this, the doorway is this, the stairs are this, this is Mamma, this is Papa, this is the day, this the night.”
― quote from My Brilliant Friend
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