“Sometimes, in the trenches, you get the sense of something, ancient. One trench we held, it had skulls in the side, embedded, like mushrooms. It was actually easier to believe they were men from Marlborough's army, than to think they'd been alive a year ago. It was as if all the other wars had distilled themselves into this war, and that made it something you almost can't challenge. It's like a very deep voice, saying; 'Run along, little man, be glad you've survived”
― Pat Barker, quote from Regeneration
“Somehow if she'd know the worst parts, she couldn't have gone on being a haven for him...Men said they didn't tell their women about France because they didn't want to worry them. but it was more than that. He needed her ignorance to hide in. Yet, at the same time, he wanted to know and be known as deeply as possible. And the two desires were irreconcilable.”
― Pat Barker, quote from Regeneration
“You know you're walking around with a mask on, and you desperately want to take it off and you can't because everybody else thinks it's your face.”
― Pat Barker, quote from Regeneration
“A society that devours its own young deserves no automatic or unquestioning allegiance.”
― Pat Barker, quote from Regeneration
“The way I see it, when you put the uniform on, in effect you sign a contract. And you don't back out of a contract merely because you've changed your mind. You can still speak up for your principles, you can still argue against the ones you're being made to fight for, but in the end you do the job.”
― Pat Barker, quote from Regeneration
“The sky darkened, the air grew colder, but he didn't mind. It didn't occur to him to move. This was the right place. This was where he had wanted to be.”
― Pat Barker, quote from Regeneration
“This reinforced Rivers’s view that it was prolonged strain, immobility and helplessness that did the damage, and not the sudden shocks or bizarre horrors that the patients themselves were inclined to point to as the explanation for their condition. That would help to account for the greater prevalence of anxiety neuroses and hysterical disorders in women in peacetime, since their relatively more confined lives gave them fewer opportunities of reacting to stress in active and constructive ways. Any explanation of war neurosis must account for the fact that this apparently intensely masculine life of war and danger and hardship produced in men the same disorders that women suffered from in peace.”
― Pat Barker, quote from Regeneration
“He's a bar-room socialist, if that's what you mean. Beer and revolution go in, piss come out”
― Pat Barker, quote from Regeneration
“Didn’t you find it all … rather unsatisfying?”
“Yes, but I couldn’t seem to see a way out. It was like being three different people, and they all wanted to go different ways.”
A slight smile. “The result was I went nowhere.”
― Pat Barker, quote from Regeneration
“And as soon as you accepted that the man’s breakdown was a consequence of his war experience rather than his own innate weakness, then inevitably the war became the issue. And the therapy was a test, not only of the genuineness of the individual’s symptoms, but also of the validity of the demands the war was making on him. Rivers had survived partly by suppressing his awareness of this. But then along came Sassoon and made the justifiability of the war a matter for constant, open debate, and that suppression was no longer possible. At times it seemed to Rivers that all his other patients were the anvil and that Sassoon was the hammer. Inevitably there were times when he resented this. As a civilian, Rivers’s life had consisted of asking questions, and devising methods by which truthful answers could be obtained, but there are limits to how many fundamental questions you want to ask in a working day that starts before eight am and doesn’t end till midnight.”
― Pat Barker, quote from Regeneration
“On the face of it he seemed to be congratulating himself on dealing with patients more humanely than Yealland, but then why the mood of self-accusation? In the dream he stood in Yealland’s place. The dream seemed to be saying, in dream language, don’t flatter yourself. There is no distinction.”
― Pat Barker, quote from Regeneration
“Fathers remain opaque to their sons, he thought, largely because the sons find it so hard to believe that there's anything in the father worth seeing. Until he's dead, and it's too late. Mercifully, doctors are also opaque to their patients.”
― Pat Barker, quote from Regeneration
“Fear, tenderness - these emotions were so despised that they could be admitted into consciousness only at the cost of redefining what it meant to be a man.”
― Pat Barker, quote from Regeneration
“we quite unselfconsciously assumed we were the measure of all things. That was how we approached them. And suddenly I saw not only that we weren't the measure of all things, but that there was no measure.”
― Pat Barker, quote from Regeneration
“I don't know what I am, but I wouldn't want a faith that couldn't handle facts.”
― Pat Barker, quote from Regeneration
“In some ways the experience of these young men paralleled the experience of the very old. They looked back on intense memories and felt lonely because there was nobody left alive who’d been there.”
― Pat Barker, quote from Regeneration
“In his experience, premonitions of disaster were almost invariably proved false, and the road to Calvary entered on with the very lightest of hearts. MR”
― Pat Barker, quote from Regeneration
“Any explanation of war neurosis must account for the fact that this apparently intensely masculine life of war and danger and hardship produced in men the same disorders that women suffered from in peace. So”
― Pat Barker, quote from Regeneration
“A hundred years from now they'll still be ploughing up skulls. And I seemed to be in that time and looking back. I think I saw our ghosts.”
― Pat Barker, quote from Regeneration
“his experience, premonitions of disaster were almost invariably proved false, and the road to Calvary entered on with the very”
― Pat Barker, quote from Regeneration
Pat Barker
Born place: in Thornaby-on-Tees, Yorkshire, The United Kingdom
Born date May 8, 1943
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“Don't let someone spend money who never earned it.”
― Nick Cole, quote from The Old Man and the Wasteland
“Mother was still brooding over the loss of her offspring many years ago but the same mother could cheerfully look upon the death of a mother bird. She had admiration for her son who had killed that innocent bird. She could partake of the dead mother’s meat with relish. I was baffled by this contradiction in life.”
― Vishnu Sakharam Khandekar, quote from Yayati: A Classic Tale of Lust
“How first loves and touches didn’t come close to being given the rare privilege of being someone’s last kiss.”
― Jack L. Pyke, quote from Backlash
“Villainy can win against one library, but not against an organization of readers.”
― Lemony Snicket, quote from Why Is This Night Different from All Other Nights?
“The stone is not a plaything for little girls, Camille.” He hardened his stare. She tried to keep her eyes equally fierce. “The path to the stone is said to be riddled with traps, endless holes in the earth where you fall forever. Deep caves shelter a species of enormous beasts that protect the stone. Men who set out to find it are usually never seen again.”
She sat back, surprised by his intensity and passion.
“Well, then,” she said, and watched him puff out his chest victoriously. “I do hope you set out to find it.”
He glowered at her. “Oh, I most certainly will. The map and stone will be mine.”
Camille stood, pushing her chair back. “It looks like you have some competition, then. I won’t give up until I’ve brought my father back to life.”
McGreenery flashed his white smile and roared with laughter. “Bring him back? Oh yes, you would actually use the stone.”
She lifted her chin. “And you wouldn’t?”
He laughed at her again. “Dear child, you don’t know a thing about it, do you? You don’t have the faintest clue how the stone will work. If you think this is some short journey without risks or sacrifices, you should sail home right now. The magic of that stone is but a fraction of the everlasting power it leads to. A clever businessman would sell that power to the highest bidder.”
― Angie Frazier, quote from Everlasting
Doctor Zhivago
Mockingjay
Like Water for Choco...
Steppenwolf
The Amber Spyglass
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