Quotessence
Home / Quotes / Quote by Dexter Palmer

Quote by Dexter Palmer

Work

The Dream of Perpetual Motion

Browse quotes and source details for this work. more

Author

Dexter Palmer

Browse famous quotes and profile details for Dexter Palmer. more

You May Also Like

“When she did walk, to the bathroom between the chairs and the customers leaning back in them, oblivious to her manoeuvres, the sight felt strangely moving and profound, like a baby, or a veteran getting out of a wheelchair, or a deer in snow. That is perhaps overdoing it. Maybe I didn't quite know that at the time, but it was striking. If you have not seen a deer in snow, I mean: moving with precision, but as if she might leap away in a completely different direction at any moment.”

DescriptionSympathySimileOlivia Sudjic
Book:Sympathy
Create image

“In my art history degree course, we did a module on palimpsests—medieval sheets of parchment so costly that, once the text was no longer needed, the sheets were simply scraped clean and reused, leaving the old writing faintly visible through the new. Later, Renaissance artists used the word pentimenti, repentances, to describe mistakes or alterations that were covered with new paint, only to be revealed years or even centuries later as the paint thinned with time, leaving both the original and the revision on view. Sometimes I have a sense that this house—our relationship in it, with it, with each other—is like a palimpsest or pentimento, that however much we try to overpaint Emma Matthews, she keeps tiptoeing back: a faint image, an enigmatic smile, stealing its way into the corner of the frame.”

ArtHouseMetaphorSettingSimileCreepyArt HistoryJ P DelaneyReferencesThe Girl BeforeEmma Matthews
Book:The Girl Before
Create image

“There are times when any amount of being within the world is like rubbing bare skin against sandpaper, when any form of motion is a kind of abrasion, leaving you raw and pink and vulnerable to the next thing. At these times I prefer to close my eyes and be still, still like the cups or candles or crackers on the table, nerveless and open. I closed my eyes and tried to think of the thing furthest from my situation.”

SimileDescriptiveAlexandra KleemanIntimations
Book:Intimations: Stories
Create image