97 Quotes by Helen Dunmore

Your life can change in the blink of an eye, on a calm and beautiful Midsummer night. You lose what you love while you think it is still safe beside you.

For you where never my blood sister so no more shall I call you little sister

Scars don't matter, little one. They are the marks of the battles we have won.

I suppose it's easier to kill people if you can pretend to yourself that they're not really people at all.

Childhood is a slum and they love it.

Some things, if you don't do them, they follow you all your life, whispering in your ear," says Granny Carne. She faces me sternly as if she's judging me. "You'll find a dozen good reasons why you pulled back from the Call, and you'll even fool yourself that you had no other choice. But in your bed at night you'll curse yourself for a coward.

Listen to what you have written. A dud rhythm in a passage of dialogue may show that you don't yet understand the characters well enough to write in their voices."[Ten rules for writing fiction (The Guardian, 20 February 2010)]

Who would think that water could grind a rock to sand, or wear away a cliff, unless they'd seen it with their own eyes? Never say never, little sister. Who can tell what the future will bring?

Only a very few people leave traces in history, or even bequeath family documents to their descendants. Most have no money to memorialise themselves, and lack even a gravestone to mark their existence. Women's lives, in particular, remain largely unrecorded. But even so, did they not shape the future?