'Bad Dreams and Other Stories' Quotes

'An Abduction’ (5)

“plain”, “bland” vs “pure” and “soft”

“Grown up insight…not through gradual accretion, but all at once”

“Accepted…her defeat…by the older, prettier, more sophisticated girl”

“Her experience was not like anyone else’s”

“Her early initiation stayed in a sealed compartment”

‘The Stain’ (4)

“from the outside…seemed to stand for all the beauty and grandeur…in reality, inside it was dingy and half-furnished”

“father and daughter were strangers to eachother”

“she couldn’t forgive herself for her innocence”

“you couldn’t undo the knowledge”

‘Deeds Not Words” (5)

“she was drowning in her love”

“kind of cult”

“she would be disgraced”

“he has power over her”

“in their shame they could hardly bear to look at eachother”

‘One Saturday Morning’ (5)

“in awe of Dom Smith’s adult competence”

“terrible knowledge…stuck inside her”

“the idea of death closed on her…like a trap”

“the whole ordinary process of living to start into motion again”

“her mother was afraid of Dom Smith too”

‘Experience’ (5)

“i’ve never lived”

“she makes me feel inexperienced”

“disguised, I was able to perform a part”

“I wanted to cross the threshold and be initiated into real life”

“my thoughts…not…on despair but…satisfactory freedom”

‘Bad Dreams’ (5)

“wasn’t she just a girl, with everything in front of her"?”

“the epilogue only existed in her dream…couldn’t dispel the taint of it”

“his meaning…seemed more accessible…in the dark than it ever was in daylight, when it’s difficulty thwarted her”

“her mother was capable; she was the whole world”

“she should have been a painter…not a housewife and a dressmaker”

‘Flight’ (5)

“silk scarf”

“as if this choice were the problem, rather than anything between them in the past”

“Susan worked as a carer”

“like in the old days when they’d acted up together, playing out some game”

“you could shed your skin over and over…and believe each time you’d come to the end of shame, and it wasn’t true”

‘Under the Sign of the Moon’ (3)

“You’re still man, but I’m wife. Why don’t you call yourself husband?”

“there were certain levels of experience she would never be able to attain”

“she would never break out of the bounds of her reasonable self”

‘Her Share of Sorrow’ (4)

“She was astonished when little William died. Children always got better in books didn’t they?”

“They had hollowed out the best thing she’d ever done”

“she would finish the stupid story…just to prove they were right, and what an idiot she was”

“the work regained its hold over her”

‘Silk Brocade’ (5)

“if only you could find the right clothes…you could transform yourself”

“old houses these days didn’t come with money attached”

“no one had any appetite, in the intensity of their present, for the past”

“projects of transformation, changing their clothes or their rooms or themselves”

“a jacket hardley mattered, in the scheme of things”