Damian Barr Quotes

We are not all in the same boat. We are in the same storm. Some of us are on superyachts. Some of us have just the one oar.

Reading is an act of radical empathy: turning the page instead of turning away.

The second time I try to kill a man I'm fourteen. Killing a man seems a very grown-up thing to do - like writing in Biro.

Maggie, tou made it possible -but not probably for me to be the man I am now.

There's no place like home. No place safer. No place scarier.

Researching and writing my novel has taken me to some really dark places. It is when you are in these dark places that you can see: there is always hope, there is always love.

Quotes › Authors › D › Damian Barr › The stories we tell ourselves about... The stories we tell ourselves about ourselves are very often not really what happened. And as I started to write stuff down, I started to challenge what I thought I knew about myself, my culture, my family, all of it. It was a huge, destroying process that completely took over my life. I just wasn't here, I mean I was physically present, but I wasn't here, I was back in the 1980s.

Above all this the stars shine. Willem pauses for a moment and feels the world turn as he struggles to pick out the Southern Cross among the interstellar static, He's never seen a sky so big or so bright. It's dizzying and he spins slowly to take it all in...

Mary the Canary lives in a cloud of perfume and colours. She's an auxiliary nurse by day and a country and western singer by night: bed pans and power ballass. She's so glamorous she makes Mrs Hart look plain. She is the other woman and I'm bring trained to hate her even though I've never met her.

Memory implies that there is some static time and place you can go back to, whereas if you relive it by trying to put yourself back in that context, its more nuanced, less black and white. More traumatic, but also more exciting. When I knew I had to write about things that would be painful, I put off doing it for ages. But then eventually the fear of not doing it becomes greater than the fear of doing it.

Equal marriage makes a huge impact, because people see gay people being allowed to be happy,” he says. “And these events involve families – and not just families but caterers and florists and hotels. And all these people are forced to accept that here are two people who are in love and want to build a family together . . . But I’m not complacent. Progress can falter, and rights can be taken away, and people can be repressed again very easily.

In the water, in the dark. It doesn’t matter whose fingers find whose toes. Nobody can see. The stars are saying nothing.

I want to watch you walk through the world before you leave it and if you stumble I'll rush forward to catch you. I like to think I'd show you the kindness you never showed me. I'd like you to owe me a favour. I want to show you that I did it. I want you to be proud of me.

I think the secret of memoirs is keeping those parts of yourself off the page, which makes what you do share more valuable.

You don't realise how much you're holding onto until you start to let go of it. I had had loads of therapy and thought I had come to terms with who I am, but there's something in the process of writing that unlocks other experiences, other emotions and you have to be prepared for that.

The news is a never-ending horror movie and nobody knows how it's going to end

Cape Town, so beautiful she was bored hearing about it and would never go just to spite it.