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Quote by Helen Dunmore

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Helen Dunmore

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“To my lovely starling, Maybe there are magical words that will make you understand, but if so, I do not know them. Words are your domain. I've always been better with pictures. I fear you think I am a monster. It's true I've disrupted many graves. The way I see it, the dead are dead. If, after their death, we can learn things from the about the human form - things that will increase the sum of human knowledge and the possibilities of art - what harm is that? After death, new life, new beauty. How can that be wrong? My friends and I have made use of some of the bodies as models. some we sell to surgeons who study them with the hopes of learning something about the frail mechanisms of the human body. I don't know exactly what Dottor de Gradi does in his workshop on the Rialto, and I was as surprised as you were to stumble on it. He couldn't - he wouldn't tell me if your friend's body ended up there. But he did assure me all of his work is focused solely on extending human life. I won't lie. I did it for the money as well. Don Loredan is holding a private exhibition in his palazzo tomorrow. The entry fee was quite steep but two of my paintings were accepted. This could be the beginning for me. I could find my own patrons. I could be more than just a peasant. Tommaso's assistant. So yes; a little for money. But mostly I did for the art. I don't expect these words to change how you feel. I simply want you not to see me as a monster. I don't want to be a monster. Not anymore. Not after meeting you. I know that we disrupted you dear friend's body, and for that I am deeply regretful. But if we had not done so, if I had not lingered in the San Domenico churchyard after standing guard for my friends, you and I might never have met. Meeting you is one thing I will never regret. I hope you like the painting. Consider tit a wedding gift. How stupid of me to let my heart go. It was a lovely fantasy while it lasted, though, wasn't it? Yours, Falco”

LoveSorrowLetterVenomBody SnatchingFalcoApology NoteCassandra CaravelloLiviana
Book:Venom
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“Letter 7 In the beginning of time, the skies were filled with flying elephants. Too heavy for their wings, they sometimes crashed through the trees and frightened other animals. All the flying grey elephants migrated to the source of the Ganges. They agreed to renounce their wings and settle on the earth. When they molted millions of wings fell to the earth, the snow covered them, and the Himalayas were born. The blue elephants landed in the sea and their wings became fins. They are the whales, the trunkless elephants of the oceans. Their cousins are the manatees, the trunkless elephants of the rivers. The chameleon elephants kept their wings but agreed never to land on earth. They change colors of their feathers every day. Today they are azure, and when it rains they are the color of pearls. When they go to sleep, the chameleon elephants always lie down in the same place in the sky and dream with one eye open. The stars you see at night are the unblinking eyes of sleeping elephants, who sleep with one eye open to best keep watch over us.”

LetterAshes And Snow
Book:Ashes and Snow: A Novel in Letters
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“Letter 90 When I used to sit up late at night writing in our bed, I was calmed by the sound of your breathing. I would hold my breath and watch your chest rise and fall. I felt like a blind man soothed by the scents and sounds of a garden. As I lie here in bed writing this letter, there is only the sound of my own breathing. When I hold my breath, there is only silence. Tonight I feel like a miner being lowered farther and farther into a dark mine shaft, longing for the scents and the sounds of a garden.”

LetterAshes And Snow
Book:Ashes and Snow: A Novel in Letters
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“I fully agree with all that you say on the advantages of H. Spencer's excellent expression of 'the survival of the fittest.' This, however, had not occurred to me till reading your letter. It is, however, a great objection to this term that it cannot be used as a substantive governing a verb; and that this is a real objection I infer from H. Spencer continually using the words, natural selection. (Letter to A. R. Wallace July 1866)”

ScienceEvolutionAgreeBiologyLetterNatural SelectionSurvival Of The FittestSpencerWallaceHerbert SpencerAlfred Russel Wallace
Author:Charles Darwin
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“Letter 17 Morning. The snow was falling outside. There was a white silence. My mother and I sat facing my father at the dining room table. There was something impenetrable about his gaze. It was like pack ice. And the ice was thickening. I could barely see into him. I knew. And they knew that I knew. He was broken. I did not even need to look at him. I could feel his brokenness all thorough the room.”

LetterAshes And Snow
Book:Ashes and Snow: A Novel in Letters
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