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Sarah Perry Books

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Enlightenment

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“Yesterday I walked to Clerkenwell in the morning and stood by the iron grate where the Fleet flows, and listened, and imagined I heard the waters of all the rivers I have known - the head of the Fleet at Hampstead where I played when I was young, and the wide Thames, and the Blackwater, with its secrets that were hardly worth keeping. Then it carried me in spate to the Essex shore, to all the marsh and the shingle, and I tasted on my lips the salt air which is also like the flesh of oysters, and I felt my heart cleaving, as I felt it there in the dark wood on the green stair and as I feel it now: something severed, something joined. The sun on my back through the window is warm and I hear a chaffinch singing. I am torn and I am mended - I want everything and need nothing - I love you and I am content without you.”

HeartbreakSlow BurnSarah PerryThe Essex Serpent
Book:The Essex Serpent
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“I think it a valid hypothesis that poverty is actually dreadfully painful -not only physically, but emotionally and socially. There is only so much pain we can expect a being to endure before his attempts to relieve it through future-damaging means become perfectly understandable and, in fact, rational.”

Poverty
Book:Every Cradle is a Grave: Rethinking the Ethics of Birth and Suicide
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“Well then, he said. What are you doing here? I am not sure. Liberty I suppose. I lived so long under constraints. You wonder why I grub about in the mud - it's what I remember from childhood. Barely ever wearing shoes - picking gorse for cordial, watching the ponds boiling with frogs. And then there was Michael, and he was - civilised. He would pave over every bit of woodland, have every sparrow mounted on a plinth. And he had me mounted on a plinth. My waist pinched, my hair burned into curls, the colour on my face painted out, then painted in again. And now I'm free to sink back into the earth if I like - to let myself grow over with moss and lichen. Perhaps you're appalled to think we are no higher than the animals, or at least, if we are, only one rung further up the ladder. But no, no - it has given me liberty. No other animal abides by rules - why then must we?”

NatureFreedomSilenceLibertyFeminismAuthenticityPatriarchyRulesConstraint
Author:Sarah Perry
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“That moment was when I realized that I was wary of all men, not just those on the official suspect list. I had a deep conviction that anyone could do anything— knowing that people can kill is far different from seeing the proof. I had learned that humanity itself did not have limits. I knew the killer was a man because of the grunt I'd heard that night; so I knew that men, especially, were capable of anything. That night in the hotel, it wasn't so much that I thought my uncle might hurt me. It was that I didn't want to be vulnerable near that violent energy, however deeply buried it might be, however well checked. I thought it was possible that his shyness was a product of shame, or a subconscious disguise. I was sure there was no such thing as an entirely benevolent man.”

MenViolenceHuman NatureDisillusionmentGender Based ViolenceGood MenFear Of MenViolence Of Man
Book:After the Eclipse: A Mother's Murder, a Daughter's Search
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“So I told her this: that it's true I've only rarely been happy, and perhaps more often been sad. But I have been content. I have lived. I have felt everything available to me: I've been faithless, devout, indifferent, ardent, diligent, and careless; full of hope and disappointment, bewildered by time and fate or confused by providence--and all of it ticking through me while the pendulum of my life loses amplitude by the hour. (Thomas Hart)”

Life And LivingContentment
Book:Enlightenment
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“Almost worse than the sorrow of missing her was the fact that Mom's death had revealed everything to be meaningless. So much of what I'd thought was true had turned out to be an illusion. I saw people around me living by these illusions— that love and safety could be counted on, that life had meaning and the future could be controlled— and I did not feel that I could ever again share their suspended disbelief. I was swimming against a strong, cold current: I could see them there, playing on a sunny beach, but I couldn't rejoin them. Continuing the struggle seemed not only incredibly painful but, even worse, pointless.”

LossHealingDepressionTraumaDisillusionmentMeaninglessness Of LifeSuspended DisbeliefThe Struggle Of LivingTrauma And Desolation
Book:After the Eclipse: A Mother's Murder, a Daughter's Search
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“Children, now being very costly to raise, no longer provide a financial benefit to their parents. So children must instead provide meaning to make up for the missing material benefits. Having children is also, for the first time in human experience, genuinely a choice rather than a matter of course or providence. This choice must be justified, as it did not have to be in the past.”

Children
Book:Every Cradle is a Grave: Rethinking the Ethics of Birth and Suicide
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“And like many lies, this one revealed a wish. How lovely it would have been, I thought, to have had some time just to sink into misery. To not have to deal with family or school. To be surrounded by people whose job it was to keep you safe from your suicidal hand. And to have the circumstances of your life truly reflect what had happened to it. A mental hospital seemed to make a lot more sense than neat rows of chairs and desks, than football bleachers, than that white-lined running track.”

HealingSuicideMiseryWhat Lies Reveal
Book:After the Eclipse: A Mother's Murder, a Daughter's Search
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“I don't understand it all,' said Thomas [to Nathan]. 'I've wondered all my life what I owe to love. There was a time I felt that because I loved a man, he was in my debt--that he'd made me love him, and so he owed me his love in return. And now he is dead, and I can never receive even a part of what I gave! But the world turned and I came to believe that all we owe to love is humility and gratitude that we were ever loved at all. You think it's humble to say it cannot be real--that she's [Grace's] mistaken, since you're not free. But that's a kind of pride. Real humility is submitting with wonder and gratitude to being loved--real wisdom is submitting with wonder and gratitude to being loved--real wisdom is understanding how amazing it is, how improbable and really absurd, that she was summoned out of nothing, as we all were, and happens to breathe this air when you breathe it, and see this world when you see it, and that out of all the billions of fellow travelers it is your word she waits for as she sits alone in her room! Well: that's a responsibility and probably a terrible one, and I can't help you with it. You must work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, and let me work out mine.”

LoveLifeWisdomHumilityPride
Book:Enlightenment
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“Children's freedom to roam and to socialize informally has been severely curtailed; their school environment has become more prisonlike, their physical safety protected at the expense of their education, development, and fun. The loss of children's freedom to roam may be regarded as an unfortunate late stage in the sacralization of childrearing.”

Childhood
Book:Every Cradle is a Grave: Rethinking the Ethics of Birth and Suicide
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“Human morality, some may argue, applies only to human actions - not to the actions of animals. I agree with this. [...] However, morality must certainly apply to human inaction, and especially our inaction in preventing harm, suffering, and awfulness. What is the moral justification for the "hands off " dogma regarding nature? We often interfere with nature for the good of humans and human industry. Why not for the good of individual animals? Bloody Nature is a machine for pushing genes into the future. Does it really "know best"?”

Wild Animal Suffering
Book:Every Cradle is a Grave: Rethinking the Ethics of Birth and Suicide
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“We don't even have to harm or kill animals in order to stop Nature from doing her evil deeds. We could simply prevent their reproduction, or even merely cease our current "conservation efforts" that involve breeding animals. Breeding wild animals and releasing them into the wild is doing the ugly work of Genesis all over again-and cruelly claiming that it's "good.”

Wild Animal Suffering
Book:Every Cradle is a Grave: Rethinking the Ethics of Birth and Suicide
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“The worst part of feeling poisoned was that it seemed to wipe out anything in me that was gentle and intelligent and funny— all the things my mother had loved about me. I was devastated to think that if she had ever been able to come back, I might already be unrecognizable to her.”

Anger And GriefPoisoned WellRetaining Your Humanity
Book:After the Eclipse: A Mother's Murder, a Daughter's Search
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