10 Quotes by Salley Vickers

There are few things more mysterious than endings. I mean, for example, when did the Greek gods end, exactly? Was there a day when Zeus waved magisterially down from Olympus and Aphrodite and her lover Ares, and her crippled husband Hephaestus ) I always felt sorry for him), and all the rest got rolled up like a worn-out carpet?

Know thyself. Then know that you are a human being, a member of the species of mankind. So know first and foremost that you do not know, and what you claim to know is almost certainly a means of distracting yourself from what you really know.

Stories are all we humans have to make us immortal.

Guilt. Does anyone escape it? Is guilt the reason we make up stories?

The Abbe Paul looked at Agnes rather as Alain had, with respect. 'How sensible. People are desperate to probe mysteries which for the most part are best left unprobed. It is the modern curse: this demented drive to explain every blessed thing. Not everything can be explained. Nor should be, I think.

Beware, beware of those who care,’ as some wise person said. Not that I’m suggesting there is anything wrong with caring. But as Granny Maud used to say, ‘Fine words butter no parsnips,’ and she might have added, ‘Caring should be felt and not heard.

And I have come to see that the better you treat someone, the more you love them – which is why you must never let someone treat you badly, for the worse they do to you, the more they will hate you. I.

Is it true we’d rather be ruined than changed?

That boy held my heart in a way that felt molecular.