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43c0935
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I doubt we will ever be forgiven. All I hope is - they'll remember we were human beings
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Timothy Findley |
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d02b43e
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People can only be found in what they do.
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Timothy Findley |
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c0405bf
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He said that in a way being loved is like being told you never have to die.
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Timothy Findley |
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c41ca60
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Everyone who's born has come from the sea. Your mother's womb is just a sea in small. And birds come of seas on eggs. Horses lie in the sea before they're born. The placenta is the sea. Your blood is the sea continued in your veins. We are the ocean -- walking on the land.
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thought-provoking
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Timothy Findley |
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7fb4259
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In the dark that followed - Lucy said; "where I was born, the trees were always in the sun. And I left that place because it was intolerant of rain. Now, we are here in a place where there are no trees and there is only rain. And I intend to leave this place - because it is intolerant of light. Somewhere - there must be somewhere where darkness and light are reconciled. So I am starting a rumour, here and now, of yet another world. I don't ..
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light
intolerance
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Timothy Findley |
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9e8d186
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I still maintain that an ordinary human being has the right to be horrified by a mangled body seen on an afternoon walk.
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Timothy Findley |
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64cb995
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Complaints about reality are immature.
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Timothy Findley |
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855fe69
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You will live when you live. No one else can ever live your life and no one else will ever know what you know...
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Timothy Findley |
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d980074
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Rodwell wandered into No Man's Land and put a bullet through his ears. On Sunday, Robert sat on his bed in the old hotel at Bailleul and read what Rodwell had written. To my daughter, Laurine; Love your mother. Make your prayers against despair. I am alive in everything I touch. Touch these pages and you have me in your fingertips. We survive in one another. Everything lives forever. Believe it. Nothing dies. I am your father always.
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Timothy Findley |
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f29586d
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They waited. The door did not open. The rain did not stop. The darkness made a tent and covered them completely.
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Timothy Findley |
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c89dea5
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Think of any great man or woman. How can you separate them from the years in which they lived? You can't. Their greatness lies in their response to that moment.
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history
historical-figures
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Timothy Findley |
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fa19915
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Nothing so completely verifies our perception of a thing as our killing of it.
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Timothy Findley |
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ccb2a78
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As for the myths, take anyone's life and deny that most of it is deliberate self-delusion - an aggrandizement - a mixture of lies and truth, of what was wanted and what was had, producing the necessary justification for having been granted life in the first place. I was struck like a match, Lily wrote. I had no option but to burn. You can put a period after that. Lily did. It was the story of her life.
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Timothy Findley |
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624fb49
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no one belongs to anyone. We're all cut off at birth with a knife and left at the mercy of strangers. You hear that? Strangers. I know what you want to do. I know you're going to go away to be a soldier. Well-you can go to hell. I'm not responsible. I'm just another stranger. Birth I can give you-but life I cannot. I can't keep anyone alive. Not anymore.
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Timothy Findley |
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587c4a0
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The spaces between the perceiver and the thing perceived can [...] be closed with a shout of recognition.
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recognition
experience
perception
knowledge
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Timothy Findley |
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6960a68
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All of this happened a long time ago. But not so long ago that everyone who played a part in it is dead. Some can still be met in dark old rooms with nurses in attendance.
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Timothy Findley |
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7ef4ab8
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I have dreamt of a life you will never know; the life of a loving and caring companion. I simply thought you should know. I see that you are in trouble. I watch and listen to you. I want to help, but you won't let me. So be it. I love you still. Do what you will, I shall watch over you.
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Timothy Findley |
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c17a73e
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What you people who weren't yet born can never know is what it meant to sleep in cities under silent falls of snow when all night long the only sounds you heard were dogs that parked at trains that passed so far away they took a short cut through your dreams and no one even woke. It was the war that changed that. It was. After the Great War for Civilization - sleep was different everywhere...
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Timothy Findley |
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cd09def
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with every new manoeuvre, the light was growing dimmer--fading by numbers as well as strength--and the sound could no longer be heard, but only the pulse of it--seen going out in the darkness--losing its edges--caving in at its centre--webbing, now, as if a spider was spinning against the rain--until the last few strands of brightness fell--and were extinguished--silenced and removed from life and from all that lives forever. And the bell t..
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Timothy Findley |
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27758ee
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Time is light, time is dark. You either dance, or you fall.
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Timothy Findley |
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4b513ce
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1915. The year itself looks sepia and soiled-muddied like its pictures. In the snapshots everyone at first seems timid-lost-irresolute. Boys and men squinting at the camera.
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Timothy Findley |
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eabdc3b
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I can't work in a house where there's saints. The minute there's saints, the devil sends messengers
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Timothy Findley |
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b559036
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The mud. There are no good similes. Mud must be a Flemish word. Mud was invented here. Mudland must have been its name. The ground is the colour of steel. Over most of the plain there isn't a trace of topsoil; only sand and clay. The Belgians call them 'clyttes', these fields, and the further you go towards the sea, the worse the clyttes become. In them, the water is reached by the plough at an average depth of eighteen inches. When it rain..
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Timothy Findley |
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40cb8e6
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in a way being loved is like being told you never have to die.
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Timothy Findley |
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0ff4187
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Here was an unknown quantity-a child in breeches with a blue scarf wound around his neck whose job it was to get them out and back alive. This...was the greatest terror of war: what you didn't know of the men who told you what to do-where to go and when. What if they were mad-or stupid? What if their fear was greater than yours? Or what if they were brave and crazy-wanting and demanding bravery from you? He looked away. He thought of being ..
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Timothy Findley |
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d5d05ff
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Mrs Ross adjusted her veil but did not put the flask away... 'Why is this happening to us, Davenport? What does it mean - to kill your children? Kill them and then go in there and sing about it! What does that mean?' She wept-but angrily.
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Timothy Findley |
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1e3ec38
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La nuit tombe, le jour se leve. Toujours.
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Timothy Findley |
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a511d96
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Me?" said Bragg. "I'm not alive. Revived, from time to time - maybe. but not alive." Liar." Try me." You forget, Mister Bragg - Stu honey - Stuart darling - Bragg baby. I already have." They had almost reached their destination. Col said: "I don't have burn marks for nothing, my dear. I don't have these scars by chance. I'm covered with your fingerprints. Covered from head to toe and back again on the other side." You sound just like Minna,..
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Timothy Findley |
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b0da986
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Ede had been pregnant not quite the full term: eight months, two weeks, four days. She had lapsed into an extended silence - partly because she was still in mourning - still enraged and afraid of speech. And partly, too, because the child itself had taken up dreaming in her belly - dreaming and, Ede was certain, singing. Not singing songs a person knew, of course. Nothing Ede could recognize. But songs for certain. Music - with a tune to it..
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Timothy Findley |
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0338a43
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Ima khora, chieto prezhiviavane na zhivota e tolkova razlichno ot nasheto sobstveno, che gi narichame ludi. Za chisto udobstvo. Narichame gi taka, za da se osvobodim ot poemaneto na otgovornost za tiakhnoto miasto v choveshkata obshchnost. I zatova gi izprashchame v priiuti, zatvariame gi, za da ne se vizhdat i chuvat, zad zakliucheni vrati. No za tiakh niama razlika mezhdu tova, koeto nie smiatame za s'nishcha i koshmari, i sveta, v koito ..
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Timothy Findley |
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ce95bff
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Ima stepeni na ludost, razbira se. Az otkrikh sledi v samiia sebe si, priznavam. - Toi makhna s r'ka. - No ludostta e silen zviar i ne mozhe da b'de ulovena v teorii. S vremeto se nauchikh ne samo da ne viarvam na teorii, no i aktivno da im se protivopostaviam. Faktite sa vazhni. I nie razpolagame samo s faktite za vsiaka individualna ludost. Obshchite teorii za ludostta se razkrivat kato se razkriva istinskata i priroda v'v vseki patsient,..
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Timothy Findley |
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af63ca2
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I tell you Charlie, I was there waiting in that field. waiting for Ede and Tom to find me. You don't think two people come together for nothing, do you? They were together because I was waiting to be found..." Then she looked straight into my face and said to me: "You know it, too, Charlie. All that time you waited for me to find you. What if I hadn't? What if I'd said: I won't?" She turned, and clinging to my arm, she surveyed the fields..
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Timothy Findley |
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1f38449
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Frederick? Had she really spoken? Certainly she'd tried, but her voice had failed to materialize and all she heard was the sound of her nightgown ripping as Frederick pulled it over her head and threw it aside. He was kneeling now between her ankles, pushing at her, forcing her knees apart and then her arms until she was entirely splayed on the bed beneath him. Nothing was said. Not a word. Ede felt his hand between her legs, forcing the..
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Timothy Findley |
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b35fbfb
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With Tom, there had never been a door to close, only the grass to lie on, never a bed; no walls, no ceiling to shut them in - or others out. Only the moon to see them, only the moon, some stars and whatever it was that had flown up out of the field when Ede had cried 'don't' in the final seconds of their embrace. Don't - meaning don't withdraw.
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Timothy Findley |
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18a2408
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Svet't, kaza toi, sv'rshva vseki den - i zapochva na sledvashchiia
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Timothy Findley |
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01cd197
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Zhivot't iziskva da go zhiveem do neponosimost.
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Timothy Findley |
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f4c44f8
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The occupants of memory have to be protected from strangers.
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Timothy Findley |
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bca94b7
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He took his aim. His arm wavered. His eyes burned with sweat. Why didn't someone come and jump on his back and make him stop? He fired. A chair fell over in his mind.
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Timothy Findley |
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3bc8fbc
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You begin to arrange your research in bundles - letters - photos - telegrams. This is that last thing you see before you put on your overcoat: Robert and Rowena with Meg: Rowena seated astride the pony - Robert holding her in place. On the back is written: 'Look! You can see our breath!' And you can.
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Timothy Findley |
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d998e2d
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music is the worst of them - roiling and boiling - overly emotionalized on the one hand, overly intellectuallized on the other. Bach and Mozart indeed! Bach inevitably makes me think of fish in a barrel! round and round and round they go and nothing ever happens. Nothing ! Tum -de-dum-dum. Tum -de-dum-dum and that's all! Tum -de-dum-de-bloody-dum-dum! As for Mozart, his emotions did not mature beyond the age of twelve. never achieved adoles..
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Timothy Findley |
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437d659
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When Mrs Ross asked him what he was thinking of, he shrugged. But he was thinking of the time he'd climbed the steeple of a church when he was ten-and had seen, for the very first time, the world spread out around him like a gift.
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Timothy Findley |
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0c6dce8
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Master Stuart made his letters into paper darts and launched them page by page from the roof of the house-watching them descend and fade into the green ravine below...Some he saved to trade at school for other artifacts of war sent home by other elder brothers like his own-but only the letters mailed from France were worthy of this exchange. They had to have the smell of fire.
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Timothy Findley |
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ab90ab9
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Houses, trees and fields of flax once flourished here. Summers had been blue with flowers. Now it was a shallow sea of stinking grey from end to end. And this is where you fought the war.
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Timothy Findley |
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1e65201
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Happiness is not our goal. The achievement of happiness deflects us from our true destiny which is the utter realization of self.
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philosophy
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Timothy Findley |