90 Quotes by Deborah Levy

My problem is that I want to smoke the cigar and for someone else to light it. I want to blow out smoke. Like a volcano. Like a monster. I want to fume. I do not want to be the girl whose job it is to wail in a high-pitched voice at funerals.

...knowledge would not necessarily serve them, nor would it make them happy. There was a chance it would instead throw light on visions they did not want to see.

The writing life is mostly about stamina. To get to the finishing line requires the writing to become more interesting than everyday life...

Life is only worth living because we hope it will get better and we'll all get home safely.

I have always wanted to go to Trieste because it sounds like tristesse, which is a light-hearted word, even though in French it means sadness. In Spanish it is tristeza, which is heavier than French sadness, more of a groan than a whisper.

Life falls apart. We try to get a grip and hold it together. And then we realize we don't want to hold it together.

Gómez had suggested I steal a fish to achieve more courage and purpose. I regarded this task as an anthropological experiment, though it crossed a border into something approaching magic, or perhaps magical thinking. When I googled how to gut a fish, there were over 9 million results.

I had broken the rules of exchange. She had given and I had taken, but I had not reciprocated. A gift like love is never free.

Sometimes we want to unbelong as much as we want to belong.