“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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“It was always the A booth. It was always the front seat of the roller coaster. It was never “Let’s not get the bottle of Cristal.”
― Bret Easton Ellis, quote from Lunar Park
“What you love, you must love all the harder because someday it will be gone.”
― Stephen King, quote from Black House
“I’ve spent my entire life listening to people tell me why I can’t be loved and how I’m nothing but a worthless piece of shit. I always told myself that I didn’t care, that I didn’t need anyone else. It was a lie, you know. I do care and I want Kiara. If it costs me my life to be with her, it doesn’t matter. I’ve already lived past my prime, anyway. I get up every morning with more pain in my joints than the day before. If I have to die, I’d rather die knowing someone cared about me, just once. Is that really too much to ask? (Nykyrian)
For us? Yes. It is. We are the gutter and the gutter is all we’ll ever be. Don’t reach out for the stars. They’ll burn you until there’s nothing left. (Syn)
Then let me burn. (Nykyrian)”
― Sherrilyn Kenyon, quote from Born of Night
“That is beside the point. If we only obey those rules that we think are just and reasonable, then no rule will stand, for there is no rule that some will not think is unjust and unreasonable. And if we wish to push our own individual advantage, as we see it, then we will always find reason to believe that some hampering rule is unjust and unreasonable. What starts, then, as a shrewd trick ends in anarchy and disaster, even for the shrewd trickster, since he, too, will not survive the collapse of society.” Trevize”
― Isaac Asimov, quote from Foundation and Earth
“You’re following me,” I say.
“Yes, I am.”
“That’s really annoying.”
“I’m sure it probably feels that way, yes.”
I stop. “I can take care of myself.” Overhead, the gas in the streetlamp surges. It grows brighter, harsher. There are no shadows anywhere as he looks at me.
“That’s exactly what worries me.”
― Ally Carter, quote from All Fall Down
The Gypsy Morph
Lady of Devices
The World Without Us
Stone's Fall
Angels
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