112 Quotes by Graham Swift

And I didn’t know I loved her till I’d dreamt of her. I didn’t know it was the real thing until an illusion had signalled it.

Today’s news, which may be yesterday’s anyway, will be eclipsed tomorrow.

This was the great truth of life, that fact and fiction were always merging, interchanging.

You may have your suspicions, your fears, you may even believe there is something, somewhere, terribly, drastically wrong, but because someone else is in charge, because there is a part of the system above you which you don’t know, you don’t question it, you even distrust your own doubts.

There has always been, for me, this other world, this second world to fall back on – a more reliable world in so far as it does not hide that its premise is illusion.

That’s the way it is: life inculdes a lot of empty space. We are one-tenth living tissue, nine-tenths water; life is one-tenth Here and Now, nine-tenths a history lesson. For most of the time the Here and Now is neither now nor here.

What does education do, what does it have to offer, when deprived of its necessary partner, the future, and face instead with – no future at all?

I don’t reread my books.

London is like no other city I know in its ability to become beautiful. You can suddenly turn a corner and there are odd moments – of light, of weather.