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Quote by Pat Barker

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The Silence of the Girls

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Author

Pat Barker
Pat Barker

Pat Barker is a renowned British author, born on May 8, 1943. Her works are known for their depiction of war and its impact on individuals and society, with her 'Regeneration' trilogy being particularly notable. Barker's writing style is delicate and has won her a wide readership. more

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“Helen All Greece hates the still eyes in the white face, the lustre as of olives where she stands, and the white hands. All Greece reviles the wan face when she smiles, hating it deeper still when it grows wan and white, remembering past enchantments and past ills. Greece sees, unmoved, God’s daughter, born of love, the beauty of cool feet and slenderest knees, could love indeed the maid, only if she were laid, white ash amid funereal cypresses.”

“They're power-hungry, the mundane said of the magical people. They're immoral, people said, and they're scary. Playing with the dark arts could plunge me into evil. I'd be pulled toward depravity. Blasphemy would begin to seem like truth, bad like good, God like Satan. It had happened to people through the centuries, they said. And they were right. All that did happen.”

“There's a widespread notion that children are open, that the truth about their inner selves just seeps out of them. That's all wrong. No one is more covert than a child, and no one has greater cause to be that way. It's a response to a world that is always using a tin-opener on them to see what they have inside, just in case it ought to be replaced with a more useful type of tinned foodstuff.”

“I found LOVE. But not just any kind of love. During one of my daily meditations, when tears were flowing down my cheeks as if I had been watching a horror movie, with all my pain, suffering and demons, playing main characters in the story of my life, I had felt an inexplicable warmth in my heart. I felt something that I had never felt before. An unconditional love… for myself. I felt that I was more than just a human being. I felt I was part of the surrounding universe. I was a spirit. And in that moment, I felt as if nothing else had existed or mattered. No worries. No problems. There was no past. There was no future. There was only ME and there was no… suffering any more. No more pain, no more heartbreak. I didn’t need anyone else to love me because I BECAME love. I became who I had always been so desperately searching for, whole as a person. I realised that only when we are whole as a spirit, filled with unconditional love for ourselves, that can we truly find and share an immense love with another human being, the one that is right for us and who is also whole as a person. – from ‘Polish Girl In Pursuit of the English Dream by Monika Wiśniewska”