“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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“What do you see when you look at me?”
“I see you,” he answered as if it was obvious. “It’s not like I see a place, or a time, or a name: just you. Your essence. Your soul. That’s how I find you every time you come back. I know it’s hard to understand, but your soul calls me…and I’m drawn to it. I couldn’t keep away if I tried.”
Sage raised his hand to my cheek, cupping it gently. I closed my eyes, resting against the warmth of his palm. When I opened them he had moved closer.
I closed the distance between us and kissed him.
I felt dizzy and hot and floaty, like every cliché…but it was true. I couldn’t feel my feet. I finally felt like I was where my soul belonged.
There was only one problem. The gearshift was digging into my side.
“Ow!” I winced.
“You okay?”
“Yeah…it’s just…” I gestured down, feeling like an idiot for ruining the moment.
Sage didn’t seem to mind. He reached down and moved his seat back to its maximum leg room, then held out his hand. I grabbed it and clambered over the center console, clumsily ducking and folding myself until I finally settled onto his lap, straddling his legs. It was the least coordinated act of seduction ever.
“Better?” he asked.
“Better.”
He kissed me, sliding his hands up the back of my shirt. It felt incredible. Without breaking away from his lips, I reached underneath his tee and felt his bare, sleek chest. My breath came faster, caught up in the frenzy of finally letting go and doing what I’d been dying to do from the second I’d seen Sage on the beach.
“Wait,” he said.
He reached down and pulled a lever. I let out a little scream as his seat back dropped all the way and I fell on top of him. I loved the feel of his body under mine. I didn’t want a single part of us not touching.
“Better now?” Sage murmured into my ear. It wasn’t fair of him to ask me a question when he was doing that. I could barely function, never mind put together an answer.
“Much better,” I said. “It’s practically a bed.”
“Is it?” Sage agreed, and in his eyes I saw exactly what that could mean.
“Oh,” I said, suddenly nervous. “But…we can’t. I mean, we don’t have…”
“I do,” he said, leaning down to kiss the hollow where my neck met my shoulder.
“You do?”
I tensed up. Why did he have one? For who?
The corner of Sage’s mouth turned up. “For us, Clea. The drugstore in Rio? I kind of had a feeling…”
He moved his lips back to my neck. He nibbled on my earlobe, and I whimpered.
“Oh,” I managed. “Well…then…”
“I love you, Clea.”
Everything tunneled in, and I heard the words echo in my head. Sage loved me. Me. I didn’t even realize I’d stopped breathing until he said my name, concerned.
“Clea?”
I looked at him and immediately relaxed.
“I love you, too.”
We kissed, and I actually felt myself melting into him as my last coherent thoughts gave way to pure sensation.”
― Hilary Duff, quote from Elixir
“I wish emotional bruises healed like physical ones.”
― Susane Colasanti, quote from Keep Holding On
“The boy heaved a sigh. "I would ask to go with you," he said, " but I have to finish my lessons. I so look forward to the day when I know everything. Then I won't have to read any more books or do any more counting."
Beatrix smiled. "I don't wish to be discouraging, Rye, but it's not possible to know everything."
"Mama does." Rye paused reflectively. "At least, Papa says we mus t pretend she does, because it makes her happy."
"Your father," Beatrix informed him with a laugh, " is one of the wisest men I've ever known.”
― Lisa Kleypas, quote from Love in the Afternoon
“If you believe some of the old stories, earth natives have been around in one form or another since the beginning of the world. They were the top predators then and they’re the top predators now because they change as the world changes, absorbing qualities from new species of predators without losing the essence of what they are.”
― Anne Bishop, quote from Vision in Silver
“In our time... a man whose enemies are faceless bureaucrats almost never wins. It is our equivalent to the anger of the gods in ancient times. But those gods you must understand were far more imaginative than our tiny bureaucrats. They spoke from mountaintops not from tiny airless offices. They rode clouds. They were possessed of passion. They had voices and names. Six thousand years of civilization have brought us to this.”
― Chaim Potok, quote from Davita's Harp
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