98 Quotes by Pat Barker

The past is a palimpsest. Early memories are always obscured by accumulations of later knowledge.

Cut a chrysalis open, and you will find a rotting caterpillar. What you will never find is that mythical creature, half caterpillar, half butterfly, a fit emblem for the human soul, for those whose cast of mind leads them to seek such emblems. No, the process of transformation consists almost entirely of decay.

Another person's life, observed from the outside, always has a shape and definition that one's own life lacks.

It’s the hardest thing in the world to go on being aware of someone else’s pain.

I looked at him as he turned and walked away and I saw a man who’d learnt nothing and forgotten nothing, a coward without dignity or honour or respect.

Achilles’ story never ends: wherever men fight and die, you’ll find Achilles.

Rivers knew only too well how often the early stages of change or cure may mimic deterioration. Cut a chrysalis open, and you will find a rotting caterpillar. What you will never find is that mythical creature, half caterpillar, half butterfly, a fit emblem of the human soul, for those whose cast of mind leads them to seek such emblems. No, the proces of transformation consists almost entirely of decay.

On the face of it he seemed to be congratulating himself on dealing with patients more humanely than Yealland, but then why the mood of self-accusation? In the dream he stood in Yealland’s place. The dream seemed to be saying, in dream language, don’t flatter yourself. There is no distinction.

Nothing happened. Well, of course nothing happened! Isn’t nothing what generally happens when you pray to the gods?