Quotes from Pat Barker

I looked at him as he turned and walked away and I saw a man who'd learnt nothing and forgotten nothing, a coward without dignity or honour or respect

Colin was beginning to be afraid(...)of the future, of the possibility, suddenly glimpsed, that his life might end like this. Like most young people, he'd always assumed, without ever really thinking about it, that regret, waste, failure lay in wait for others, but not for him. Now(...)he realized, for the first time, that he was not exempt, that this, unless he took steps to avoid it, could happen to him.

One began by finding mental illness mystifying, and ended by being still more mystified by health.

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.

Rivers knew only too well how often the early stages of change or cure may mimic deterioration. Cut a chrysalis open, and you will find a rotting caterpillar. What you will never find is that mythical creature, half caterpillar, half butterfly, a fit emblem of the human soul, for those whose cast of mind leads them to seek such emblems. No, the proces of transformation consists almost entirely of decay.

It was one of those moments that I think everybody experiences - and they don't have to be dramatic - when things begin to change; and you know there's no point ruminating about it, because thinking isn't going to help you understand. You're not ready to understand it yet; you have to live your way into the meaning.

Nobody looks him in the face now, it's as if his grief frightens them. What are they afraid of? That one day they'll have to endure pain like this? Or that they never will, that they're incapable of it, because grief's only ever as deep as the love it's replaced.

you should go tho the past, looking not for messages or warnings, but simply to be humbled by the weight of human experience that has preceded the brief flicker of your own few days.

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

A flicker of fear, but it faded. The man looked round the room again, as if searching for something, but for something inside himself, Colin thought. For something he ought to feel, and couldn't.

A woman, not a thing. Wasn't that a prize worth risking everything for, however short a time I might have to enjoy it?

We all try to make crazy deals with the gods, often without really knowing we're doing it.

And the Great Adventure - the real life equivalent of all the adventure stories they'd devoured as boys - consisted of crouching in a dugout, waiting to be killed. The war that had promised so much in the way of 'manly' activity had actually delivered 'feminine' passivity, and on a scale that their mothers and sisters had hardly known. No wonder they broke down.

Crows are ferociously intelligent birds. I used to watch them gather as the men set off for another day of war. Drums, pipes, trumpets, the rhythmical pounding of swords on shields—to the fighters, this music meant honour, glory, courage, comradeship…To the crows, it only ever meant food.

First-person narrators can't die, so as long as we keep telling the story of our own lives we're safe. Ha bloody fucking Ha.

The process of transformation consists almost entirely of decay.

I had him in my cab once. Who? Neville asked Rupert Brooke. He was good, him. There's some corner of a foreign field/ That is forever England. That would be the bit with my nose under it; just fucking drive, will you?

Achilles' story never ends: wherever men fight and die, you'll find Achilles.

In leading his patients to understand that breakdown was nothing to be ashamed of, that horror and fear were inevitable responses to the trauma of war and were better acknowledged than suppressed, that feelings of tenderness for other men were natural and right, that tears were an acceptable and helpful part of grieving, he was setting himself against the whole tenor of their upbringing. They'd been trained to identify emotional repression as the essence of manliness.

The silence deepened, like a fall of snow, accumulating second by second, flake by flake, each flake by itself inconsiderable, until everything is transformed.

My two older brothers died beside him. I don't know how my third oldest brother died, but somehow or other, whether by the gates or on the palace step, he met his end. For the first and only time in my life, I was glad my mother was dead.

somehow when you live with somebody, when you see them every day, you don't notice that they've changed. People who hardly know them at all see the change in them before you do.

The military authorities say uniforms must be preserved at all costs, but that means manhandling patients who are in agony. Cut them off, says Sister Byrd, and she's the voice of authority here, in the Salle d'Attente, not some gold-braid-encrusted crustacean miles away from blood and pain, so cut they do, snip, snip, snip, snip, as close to the skin as they dare.

You'll get your chance. One day. And when you do grab it with both hands.