108 Quotes by Jim Crace

These are the stories that we tell ourselves and only ourselves, and they are better left unshared.

There is no remedy for death—or birth—except to hug the spaces in between. Live loud. Live wide. Live tall.

Wheat—like men and women—benefits from being crushed. Crushing makes it fit to stand up all the better.

We are a heathen company, more devoted to the customs and the Holy days than to the Holiness itself. We find more pleasure in the song and dance of God than in the piety.

A hundred years ago no one was silent or tongue-tied, as we are now, when death was in the room. They had not yet muzzled grief or banished it from daily life. Death was cultivated, watered like a plant. There was no need for whispering or mime.

Dissent is never counted; it is weighed. The master always weighs the most.

There's solace in the thought that I will never finish missing her.

Death does not tidy up or sweep as it departs. We all of us leave traces other than the ashes and the bones.

Writing careers are short. For every 100 writers, 99 never get published. Of those who do, only one in every hundred gets a career out of it, so I count myself as immensely privileged.