Jim Crace > Quotes

“There's solace in the thought that I will never finish missing her.”
― Jim Crace, Harvest

“There is no remedy for death—or birth—except to hug the spaces in between. Live loud. Live wide. Live tall.”
― Jim Crace, Being Dead

“...crushed between the fears of going forward and the dread of going back.”
― Jim Crace, The Pesthouse

“These are the stories that we tell ourselves and only ourselves, and they are better left unshared.”
― Jim Crace, Harvest

“The mood has changed. It's heavier. We were liquid; now we're stones.”
― Jim Crace, Harvest

“Secrets are like pregnancies hereabouts. You can hide them for a while but then they will start screaming.”
― Jim Crace, Harvest

“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.”
― Jim Crace, Being Dead

“The dead leaves fly. They're cropped and gathered to the rich barn of the earth.”
― Jim Crace, Harvest

“Any hawk looking down on the orchard's cloistered square, hoping for the titbit of a beetle or a mouse, would see a patterned canopy of trees, line on line, the orchard's melancholy solitude, the jewellery of leaves. It would see the backs of horses, the russet, apple-dotted grass, the saltire of two crossing paths worn smooth by centuries of feet, and two grey heads, swirling in a lover's dance, like blown seed husks caught up in an impish and exacting wind and with no telling when or where they'll come to ground again.”
― Jim Crace, Harvest

“And it seems I ought to scatter too. Perhaps at once. It's always better to turn your back on the gale than press your face against it.”
― Jim Crace, Harvest

“I think I'd like her to turn round. I want to see her face a second time. That first time she was hardly visible. She was little more than dark on dark, a body shape, as I remember it. If only she would spin round on her heels and the moonlight would oblige, I could persuade myself she's real and not a spectre summoned up by loneliness.”
― Jim Crace, Harvest

“I am excused, I think, for wondering if I am the only one alive this afternoon with no other living soul who wants to cling to me, no other soul who'll let me dampen her. The day has ended and the light has snuffed. I'm left to trudge into the final evening with nobody to loop their soaking hands through mine.”
― Jim Crace, Harvest

“On nights like this, when there is anxiety about, there is a glut of lovemaking. Then the moon is our dance master. He has us move in unison. He has us trill and carol in each other's ears until the stars themselves have swollen and ripened to our cries. As ever here, we find our consolations sowing seed.”
― Jim Crace, Harvest

“There's not a season set aside for pondering and reveries. It will not les us hesitate or rest; it does not wish us to stand back and comment on its comeliness or devise a song for it. It has no time to listen to our song. It only asks us not to tire in our hard work. It wants to see us leathery, our necks and fore-arms burnt as black as chimney oak; it wants to leave us thinned and sinewy from work. It taxes us from dawn to dusk, and torments us at night; that is the taxing that the thrush complains about. Our great task each and every year is to defend ourselves against hunger and defeat with implements and tools.”
― Jim Crace, Harvest

“We only meet the God within our true selves through suffering. We seek the wilderness because in this solitude we can hear ourselves more clearly.”
― Jim Crace, Quarantine

“Yet there still was love, the placid love that only time can cultivate, a love preserved by habit and by memory. Their tree had little rising sap, perhaps, but it was held firm by deep and ancient roots.”
― Jim Crace, Being Dead

“It was their creed that devils had no place on earth, that evil was not a living creature in the world. There was no one to blame other than oneself.”
― Jim Crace, Quarantine: Picador Classic

“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.”
― Jim Crace, Harvest

“Passion is the work of seconds. You only have to make a god of what you most desire.”
― Jim Crace, Being Dead

“Sometimes in matters of the heart words are not required. Are ill advised, in fact.”
― Jim Crace, Genesis: A Novel

“...for how could anyone not know by now how mischievous the world could be?”
― Jim Crace, The Pesthouse

“An oily fish,’ warned George. ‘Take heed you don’t grease up the lappets on that coat.’ ‘The pilchard is a surface fish,’ replied Aymer, picking knowledge from his memory as clumsily as he now was picking bones from between his teeth. He was delighted to see George. ‘Pelagic is the term. You know the word?’ ‘Don’t know the word. I know the fish well enough. There’s nothing else this time of year, exceptin’ pilchers.’ ‘Demersic is the other word, I think. The twin of pelagic. It speaks of fish that live upon the ocean floor. I see a parallel with people here. Those shoals of common men who live near the surface, and those solitary, more silent ones that inhabit deeper water. I count myself to be demersic, then. You, George, can I describe you as pelagic, a pilchard as it were? You would not take offence at that?’ ‘You’re talking to a pilchard, then?’ ‘Well, yes, I am, within my metaphor …’ ‘Mistaking a man for a fish is madness, I should say. It in’t what I’d call deep and solitary. What was that word you used?’ ‘Demersic, George.’ ‘Now, there’s a word! What do you say I’ll never have to use that word again?’ ‘Do not hold words in low regard. Words have power, George. Words are deeds …’ ‘Oh, yes?’ said George. ‘And the wind is a potato, I suppose. If words are deeds, then I’m the meanest man in Wherrytown. There in’t a sin I won’t have done.’ ‘No, what I meant to say is this, that words and deeds should be the same. You make a promise, you should keep it. You hold a view, then you should stand by it. You should say what you do: you should do what you say.’ ‘Well, there’s the difference,’ said George, evidently losing interest. ‘People in these parts in’t impressed by words. They don’t mean what they say. They only mean what they do. And that, I think, makes better sense.”
― Jim Crace, Signals of Distress

“Dissent is never counted; it is weighed. The master always weighs the most.”
― Jim Crace, Harvest

“There is no remedy for death--or birth--except to hug the spaces in between. Live loud. Live wide. Live tall.”
― Jim Crace, Being Dead

“Wheat—like men and women—benefits from being crushed. Crushing makes it fit to stand up all the better.”
― Jim Crace, Harvest

“The plowing's done. The seed is spread. The weather is reminding me that, rain or shine, the earth abides, the land endures, the soil will persevere forever and a day. Its smell is pungent and high-seasoned. This is happiness.”
― Jim Crace

“An oily fish,’ warned George. ‘Take heed you don’t grease up the lappets on that coat.’ ‘The pilchard is a surface fish,’ replied Aymer, picking knowledge from his memory as clumsily as he now was picking bones from between his teeth. He was delighted to see George. ‘Pelagic is the term. You know the word?’ ‘Don’t know the word. I know the fish well enough. There’s nothing else this time of year, exceptin’ pilchers.’ ‘Demersic is the other word, I think. The twin of pelagic. It speaks of fish that live upon the ocean floor. I see a parallel with people here. Those shoals of common men who live near the surface, and those solitary, more silent ones that inhabit deeper water. I count myself to be demersic, then. You, George, can I describe you as pelagic, a pilchard as it were? You would not take offence at that?’ ‘You’re talking to a pilchard, then?’ ‘Well, yes, I am, within my metaphor …’ ‘Mistaking a man for a fish is madness, I should say. It in’t what I’d call deep and solitary. What was that word you used?’ ‘Demersic, George.’ ‘Now, there’s a word! What do you say I’ll never have to use that word again?’ ‘Do not hold words in low regard. Words have power, George. Words are deeds …’ ‘Oh, yes?’ said George. ‘And the wind is a potato, I suppose. If words are deeds, then I’m the meanest man in Wherrytown. There in’t a sin I won’t have done.”
― Jim Crace, Signals of Distress

“It's certain that you cannot tell from how a person works or how a person strolls behind her hens what kind of life they live in secrecy.”
― Jim Crace, Harvest

“Death does not tidy up or sweep as it departs.
We all of us leave traces other than the ashes and the bones.”
― Jim Crace, The Melody

“Aymer turned towards the sea. There was a perfect panorama of chapel, town and harbour, with thinning wraiths of smoke haunting the sky in silent, crooked unison and the last remaining smudges of the snow slipping down those roofs that had no warming chimneys. Was this worthy of a sketch, a verse, an observation in his diary, Aymer wondered. What was that phrase he’d read that morning in dell‘Ova? He took the book from his pocket and found the passage: ‘The solitary Traveller has better company than those that voyage in the multitude, for he has Nature as his best Companion and no man can be lonely in its Assemblies of sky and earth and water, nor want of Friends.’ Aymer read this passage several times. It ought to comfort him, he thought. He was one of life’s ‘solitary travellers’ after all, a Radical, an aesthete and a bachelor. He didn’t voyage in the multitude. He knew that he was destined to a life alone. He looked for solace in the Assembly of sky and earth and water that was spread out before him. But there wasn’t any solace. He couldn’t fool himself. He’d rather be some cheerful low-jack, welcome at an inn, than the emperor of all this landscape”
― Jim Crace, Signals of Distress