Quotes from Helen Dunmore

Reread, rewrite, reread, rewrite. If it still doesn't work, throw it away.

Writing poetry makes you intensely conscious of how words sound, both aloud and inside the head of the reader. You learn the weight of words and how they sound to the ear.

The see lifts me again, and carries me away with it.

Be brave. Each time you are brave, it grows easier.

We know everything about the Earth now, except how to keep her alive.

You will come back to us?' 'Yes, I will come back. I belong to Ingo now.

Everyone knows they're only stories. Mermaids aren't real: they're a legend. As long as humans believe that, Ingo is safe.

Chimpanzees look nearly human. They share most of their DNA with us. But we do research on them. We experiment on them and because they're not quite human, that's all right.

It seemed to me that there was a self-interest hidden in the core of all of us, which cooled us when we contemplated any fate which did not touch us directly.

I suppose it's easier to kill people if you can pretend to yourself that they're not really people at all.

Lily had lived in fear before she knew why she was afraid. She'd grown up knowing that people hated her. Perfectly ordinary people, the kind of adults who ought to be helping her to cross the road, hated Lily and wanted her gone. That was the climate of her childhood.

It was something he'd learned in the war: only think about what is directly in front of you. ... plan ahead all the time... but (don't ) feel ahead.

Go back to your house then, and see what happiness you find there.' 'It has nothing to do with happiness.' 'It is true that marriage seems often to have little to do with happiness. But who am I to judge? I have never been married.

It's not evil that separates Earth and Ingo; it's difference. But there are plenty who want to make evil out of difference.

Childhood is a slum and they love it.

Is my mind closed? No. It's wide open. I'm always waiting.

Fear of this order is not an emotion. It is like a virus overwhelming every cell of his body, while his mind struggles to remain clear.

They had something, that generation, he thought. They didn't doubt themselves. They knew what life was, and where they belonged in it. Not like us.

she would have to tell the story of this afternoon to herself over and over until she could make a different shape from it to comfort herself.

she supposed that once it had all made sense, when it was whole. It annoyed her, the way things got broken up so that they couldn't fit together properly any more.

that omelettes couldn't be made without breaking eggs. Sacrifice

How's your love-life Ulli? Ulli pictures here love-life as an elusive but rapacious animal which nobody else has ever seen. This is why they keep asking after it.

Who would think that water could grind a rock to sand, or wear away a cliff, unless they'd seen it with their own eyes? Never say never, little sister. Who can tell what the future will bring?

It's so respectable you could put it in a Christmas circular letter.