Quotes from Anna Burns

I'd rather you came out with your filthy, unfitting language for the rest of your life than for you to turn out one of them cowardly people who can't speak their minds but won't hold their peace and instead mumble behind hands and get their fights out in sneakery and in whispers.

She admonished him, saying 'I think I hate you,' which meant she didn't because 'I think I hate you' is the same as 'probably I hate you', which is the same as 'I don't know if I hate you', which is the same as 'I don't hate you, oh my God, my love, I love you, still love you, always, always have I loved you and never have I stopped loving you'.

As we jumped the tiny hedge because we couldn't be bothered with the tiny gate to set off on our running, I inhaled the early evening light and realized this was softening, what others might term a little softening. Then, landing on the pavement in the direction of the parks & reservoirs, I exhaled this light and for a moment, just a moment, I almost nearly laughed.

Next came abortions and I had to guess them also, from 'vermifuge, squaw mint, Satan's apple, premature expulsion, being failed in the course of coming into being' with any doubt dispelled by, 'Well, daughter, you can't disappoint me anymore than you've already disappointed me, so tell me –what did you procure and which of them drab aunts did you procure it of?

At eighteen I had no proper understanding of the ways that constituted encroachment.

To shoot up a district of women, children, prams and goldfish otherwise, to run them through with swords much as one might like to, would not look good, would look grave, sexist, unbalanced, not only in the glare of the critical side of the home media, but also in the eyes of the international media

Not that she could see, but it was unmistakable not to hear what he looked like.

also found the situation unworkable. Not just unworkable – ridiculous. Not just ridiculous – perturbing.

He was leaning over, looking out at me, smiling and friendly by way of being obliging. But by now, by age eighteen, 'smiling, friendly, and obliging' always had me straight on the alert.

It's not about being happy,' he said, which was, and still is, the saddest remark I've ever heard.

At eighteen I had no proper understanding of the ways that constituted encroachment. I had a feeling for them, an intuition, a sense of repugnance for some situations and some people, but I did not know intuition and repugnance counted, did not know I had a right not to like, not to have to put up with, anybody and everybody coming near.

He'd homed in on that flag issue, the flags-and-emblems issue, instinctive and emotional because flags were invented to be instinctive and emotional – often pathologically, narcissistically emotional – and he meant that flag of the country from 'over the water' which was also the same flag of the community from 'over the road'. It was not a flag greatly welcomed in our community. Not a flag at all welcomed in our community

Some too, would make mention of the actual word 'rumour', as in 'Rumour says', before going on to personify rumour, as if it wasn't they who were launching or perpetuating Rumour themselves.

there were sunsets every day, that we weren't meant to be coffined and buried whilst all the time still living, that nothing of the dark was so enormous that never could we surmount it, that always there were new chapters, that we must let go the old, open ourselves to symbolism, to the most unexpected of interpretations, that we must too, uncover what we've kept hidden, what we think we might have lost.

She did horror stories on herself, filling in blanks where I refused to supply information. This meant she wrote the entire script herself.

What if we accept these points of light, their translucence, their brightness; what if we let ourselves enjoy this, stop fearing it, get used to it; what if we come to believe in it, to expect it, to be impressed upon by it; what if we take hope and forgo our ancient heritage and instead, and infused, begin to entrain with it, with ourselves then to radiate it; what if we do that, get educated up to that, and then, just like that, the light goes off or is snatched away?

That was a mistake: to have been emotional, to have been seen and heard to be emotional,

He had never said her name. Indeed, he couldn't say it. Not because he's forgotten it. Mot certainly he hadn't forgotten it. It was the dread of the capitulation of it, of the handing over of himself in it, of what it might take from him to pay her the compliment of letting her know he really knew her name.

An audible 'click' sounded as the milkman and I ran by a bush and this was a bush I'd run by lots of times without clicks coming out of it.

No longer did I want to explain, for I could see myself in the moment, exactly as she was seeing me, as all of them were seeing me.

Certainly I knew the feeling of shame and I knew everybody around me knew that feeling as well. In no way was it a weak feeling, for it seemed more potent than anger, more potent than hatred, stronger even than that most disguised of emotions, fear.

That relative, that temporal plane -- where sensitivities vary, where no one has the same personal history even if they have the same communal history, where something which is a trigger for one person passes off unnoticed by another person -- definitely was the place where the raw living of life and the imperfect mental response to that raw living took place.

So he made his remarks and felt entitled to make his remarks and I did not speak because I did not know how to respond to this person.

Intense nosiness about everybody had always existed in the area. Gossip washed in, washed out, came, went, moved on to next target.