Tin Man Sarah Winman Quotes

And I wonder what the sound of a heart breaking might be. And I think it might be quiet, unperceptively so, and not dramatic at all. Like the sound of an exhausted swallow falling gently to earth.

There's something about first love, isn't there? she said. It's untouchable to those who played no part in it. But it's the measure of all that follows.

I haven't cried. But sometimes I feel as if my veins are leaking, as if my body is overwhelmed, as if I'm drowning from the inside.

Men and boys should be capable of beautiful things.

I try hard to be liked, I always have. I try hard to lessen people’s pain. I try hard because I can’t face my own.

And I remember thinking, how cruel it was that our plans were out there somewhere. Another version of our future, out there somewhere, in perpetual orbit.

I said to him that just because you can’t remember, doesn’t mean the past isn’t out there. All those precious moments are still there somewhere.

Everything was real, not perfect. And yet that's what had made it so perfect.

We love who we love, don’t we?

But it was my humanness that led me to seek, that's all. Led us all to seek. A simple need to belong somewhere.

Think about it, I said. We all had to come out of the dark to sing.

I’m broken by my need for others. By the erotic dance of memory that pounces when loneliness falls.

..And now look. Life changes in ways we can never imagine. Walls come down and people are free. You wait, she says.

And sometimes, when the day loomed grey, I'd sit at my desk and remember the heat of that summer. I’d remember the smells of tuberose that were carried by the wind, and the smell of octopus cooking on stinking griddles. I’d remember the sound of our laughter and the sound of a doughnut seller, and I’d remember the red canvas shoes I lost in the sea, and the taste of pastis and the taste of his skin, and a sky so blue it would defy anything else to be blue again. And I’d remember my love for a man that almost made everything possible.

Autumn knocks on the window. I pull back the sliding doors and let it in. Lights from the meat market flicker and car lights streak the gloom. Overhead the pulse of aeroplane wings replaces the stars. The flat is quiet. This is loneliness.

..How the numbness in my fingertips travelled to my heart and I never even knew it. I had crushes, I had lovers, I had orgasms. My trilogy of desire, I liked to call it, but I'd no great love after him, not really. Love and sex became separated by a wide river and one the ferryman refused to cross.

company at any age is good.

And Michael reached for Dora’s hand and they laughed and Ellis remembered how grateful he was that Michael’s care was instinctive and natural because he could never be that way with her. He was constantly on the lookout for the last good-bye.

It would be as if the sun itself rose every morning on that wall, showering the silence of their mealtimes with the shifting emotion of light.

She would suddenly stop in front of that painting, and whatever she was saying or doing at that precise moment came to an abrupt halt in the presence of the colour yellow. It was her solace. Her inspiration and confessional.

That was the world he inhabited between the time of it happening and the time of him knowing. A brief window, not yet shattered, when music still stirred, when beer still tasted good, when dreams could still be hatched at the sight of a plane careering across a perfect summer sky.

But when she had entered the gallery room, the storm shutters around her heart flew open and she knew immediately that this was the life she wanted: Freedom. Possibility. Beauty.

He remembered how Michael had bragged that he could swim, but he couldn't. He said that he'd read everything about swimming, firmly believing he could trip across words, like stepping stones, to the bank of experience. But he couldn't.

It was still a world of shyness and fear, and those shared moments were everything: my loneliness masquerading as sexual desire. But it was my humanness that led me to seek, that’s all. Led us all to seek. A simple need to belong somewhere.

Pity you if you thought it was overrated. I would've fucking revelled in it.

I looked young then and my young was audacious. I lay back in those tiny dusty rooms and let the summer dusk unbutton me.

I’d remember my love for a man that almost made everything possible.

He thought they looked so happy, and he thought they were family, and he wanted to show that in the photograph. They were all that mattered.

I struggle between my tears, and can do little else but make for the side. I rest till I’m calm and my breathing has settled. I lift myself out and sit by the edge of the pool with a towel around my shoulders. And I wonder what the sound of a heart breaking might be. And I think it might be quiet, unperceptively so, and not dramatic at all. Like the sound of an exhausted swallow falling gently to earth.

I rest till I’m calm and my breathing has settled. I lift myself out and sit by the edge of the pool with a towel around my shoulders. And I wonder what the sound of a heart breaking might be. And I think it might be quiet, unperceptively so, and not dramatic at all. Like the sound of an exhausted swallow falling gently to earth.

And Ellis remembered thinking he would never meet anyone like him again, and in that acknowledgement, he knew, was love.

No ghosts tonight? she said. Are there usually any? I said. Would that be a comfort? I think it might, I said.

He said that he’d read everything about swimming, firmly believing he could trip across words, like stepping-stones, to the bank of experience

smells of linseed and coffee, brushes standing in olive cans, wildflowers too. A paint-splattered bed in the corner and me making Martinis naked, as G painted

I am broken by my need for others, by the erotic dance of memory that pounces when loneliness falls.

I can't do deadlines when everyone is dying.

I am fat, and i lift up my jumper. This wasn't here yesterday, I say. This is trespassing.

A moment of authenticity when fate and blueprint collide and everything is not only possible, but within arm’s reach.

I carried the tree into the front room where cloves had punctured the skin of oranges and I could see where you had been only minutes before. Your indent was still warm on the sofa with a book open to its side, a table with an empty plate, a cardigan, and the slow fade of a fire.

What was it about these roads that plunged him into a state of childlike anxiety? The light had virtually disappeared by the time he reached the front door, and a feeling of foreboding had taken hold.

The air fizzed. I remember telling this to Annie once, and Ellis couldn’t remember a bloody thing. He’s so disappointing at times. Couldn’t remember the fishing boats, or Francoise Hardy, or how warm the evening was, and how the air fizzed - Fizzed? he said. Yes, I said. Fizzed with possibly or maybe excitement. I said to him that just because you can’t remember doesn’t mean the past isn’t out there. All those precious moments are still there somewhere. I think he’s embarrassed by the word precious, said Annie. Maybe, I said, looking at him.

Eighteen months ago, the phone rang. Yes? I said. What now? I said. What— But there was silence. G? Silence. He began to cry. Talk to me, I said. Silence. I’ve got it, he said. It: the shorthand we all understood. I said I’d never leave his side.

Fifteen sunflowers, some in bloom and some turning. Yellow on yellow pigment that darkened to ochre. Yellow earthenware vase decorated by a complementary blue line that cut across its middle. The original was painted by one of the loneliest men on earth. But painted in a frenzy of optimism and gratitude and hope. A celebration of the transcendent power of the color yellow.

When he stopped, she bent down and kissed him on the head and said, Thank you. Because everything she held on and everything she believed in came together in that unexpected moment. The simple belief that men and boys were capable of beautiful things.

We haven’t got to the Sunflowers yet, said Michael. No, we haven’t, she said. You’re right. OK, so Vincent hoped to set up an artists’ studio down there in the South because he was keen to have friends and like-minded people around him. I think he was probably lonely, said Michael. What with the ear thing and the darkness. I think he was, too, said Dora. 1888 was the year, and he was waiting for another artist to join him, a man called Paul Gauguin. People say that, in all probability, he painted the Sunflowers as decoration for Gaugain’S room. Did lots of versions of them too, not just this. It’s a lovely thought, though, isn’t it? Some people say it’s not true but I like to think it is. Painting flowers as a sign of friendship and welcome. Men and boys should be capable of beautiful things. Never forget that, you two, she said, and she disappeared into the kitchen.

/A weekend toward the end of September, the bell above the door rang and there he was in the shop. Same old feeling in my guts. I’ll go if you want me to, he said. I smiled, I was so fucking happy to see him. You’ve only just got here, you twat, I said. Now give us a hand with this, and he took the other end of the trestle table and moved it over to the wall. Pub? I said. He grinned. And before I could say anything else he put his arms around me. And everything he couldn’t say in our room in France was said in that moment. I know, I said. I know. I’d already accepted I wasn’t the key to unlock him. She’d come later. It took a while to acknowledge the repercussions of that time. How the numbness in my fingertips traveled to my heart and I never even knew it. I had crushes, I had lovers, I had orgasms. My trilogy of desire, I liked to call it, but I’d no great love after him, not really. Love and sex became separated by a wide river and one the ferryman refused to cross. The psychiatrist liked that analogy. I watched him write it down. Chuckle, chuckle, his pen across the page.

I gasp. A hand down the back of my jeans has found my crack. A blast of poppers hits my nose and my heart thumps to the bass notes of desire.

I remember being collected from school by Mrs Deakin, who bought me sweets on the way home and let me play with a dog for as long as I wanted.

Each job, to me, is proof that I still can care.

You can stay that side and I'll stay over here. And we won't touch. We'll just be company for one another, and company at any age is good.

He made me feel who I'd been all those years ago. [...] I became the boy I'd once been, living out the fantasy of a long-gone youth.

There’s something about first love, isn’t there? she said. It’s untouchable to those who played no part in it. But it’s the measure of all that follows, she said.

I'd already accepted I wasn't the key to unlock him. She'd come later.

Because everything she held on to and everything she believed in came together in that unexpected moment. The simple belief that men and boys were capable of beautiful things.

I've missed you, he says. In my chest, the sound of an exhausted swallow falling gently to earth.

I know, I said. I know. I’d already accepted I wasn’t the key to unlock him. She’d come later.

thinking, All this fuss over nothing. I’ve never felt so clear.

Talking bollocks because of the drugs.

They're secret because we don't know what to do about the thing we were. So we stay away from it.

The perverse pull of the past drew him inside to the back room, virtually unaltered since the days of his youth.

Really, though, it was about her touch and gaze, because when either fell on him, neither wanted to let him go.

He was constantly on the lookout for the last goodbye.

Reflexology is the new sex, I say.

Two ends of the spectrum, the haves and have-nots, whether it be faith or money or tolerance.

In my chest, the sound of an exhausted swallow falling gently to earth.

Love and sex became separated by a wide river and one the ferryman refused to cross. The psychiatrist liked that analogy. I watched him write it down. Chuckle, chuckle, his pen across the

And I wonder what the sound of a heart breaking might be. And I think it might be quiet, imperceptibly so, and not dramatic at all. Like the sound of an exhausted swallow falling gently to earth.

These people just don’t know how to be English, Mrs Wright. But they’re not English, said Mabel, and you said the same about the Welsh twenty years ago. Good day to you, Mrs Copsey. Careful of the flies!

It was still a world of shyness and fear, and those shared moments were everything: my loneliness masquerading as sexual desire. But it was my humanness that led me to seek, that's all. Led us all to seek. A simple need to belong somewhere.

I’M IN G’S ROOM watching the late news. The BBC reporting from Germany. The Berlin Wall is down and the gates are open. Cars are honking, friends and families are reunited and champagne is drunk. Chloe comes in and brings me a tea. She puts her arm around me and says, nodding to the TV, No one thought this was possible ten years ago. And now look. Life changes in ways we can never imagine. Walls come down and people are free. You wait, she says. I know what she’s trying to say: Hope.

I have such fondness for men like him, though. They were my mentors. They showed me how to compartmentalise my life, how to keep things separate, how to pass. And even though they’ve been, at times, the punchline to my stories or pathetic gossip shared across a pillow, I’m so grateful to them. It was still a world of shyness and fear, and those shared moments were everything: my loneliness masquerading as sexual desire. But it was my humanness that led me to seek, that’s all. Led us all to seek. A simple need to belong somewhere.

He sat down on the cold tiled floor and leaned back against the fridge. As he reached for more paper, it was then that he imagine his wife`s hand instead. He closed his eyes. Felt her hand in his hand and the softness of her lips leaving a shimmering trail across his arm.

That was the world he inhabited between the time of it happening and the time of him knowing. A brief window, not yet shattered, when music still stirred, when beer still tasted good, when dreams could still be hatched at the sight of aplane careering across a perfect summer sky.

That night in his room, he searched for signs of something wrong in his sketchbooks old and new. The drawings he’d made of his mother a year ago compared to the ones of now were proof on the page because he knew her face so well. Her eyes were sunken and the light they emitted was dusk not dawn.

He remembered how Michael had bragged that he could swim, but he couldn’t. He said that he’d read everything about swimming, firmly believing he could trip across words, like stepping stones, to the bank of experience. But he couldn’t. It would take another summer before Michael would learn to swim. But he floated, though. Face down in the river with his arms and legs out wide, and people watched, and sometimes their laughter turned to panic when they saw little sign of movement. Dead-Man’s Float, he

float before I could swim. Ellis never believed it was called Dead-Man’s Float, thought I’d made it up. I told him it was a survival position after a long exhausting journey. How apt. All I see below is blue light. Peaceful and eternal. I’m holding my breath until my body throbs as one pulse. I roll over and suck in a deep lungful of warm air. I look up at the starry starry night. The sound of water in and out of my ears, and beyond this human shell, the sound of cicadas fills the night. I dreamt of my mother. It was an image, that’s all, and a fleeting one, at that. She was faded with age, like a discarded offcut on the studio floor. In this dream, she didn’t speak, just stepped out of the shadows, a reminder that we are the same, her and me, cut from the same bruised cloth. I understand how she got up one day and left, how instinctively she trusted the compulsion to flee. The rightness of that action. We are the same, her and me. She walked out when I was eight. Never came back. I remember being collected from school by our neighbour Mrs Deakin, who bought me sweets on the way home and let me play with a dog for as long as I wanted. Inside the house, my father was sitting at the table, drinking. He was holding a sheet of blue writing paper covered in black words, and he said, Your mother’s gone. She said she’s sorry. A sheet of writing paper covered in words and just two for me. How was that possible? Her remnant life was put in bags and stored in the spare room at the earliest opportunity. Stuffed in, not folded – clothes brushes, cosmetics all thrown in together, awaiting collection from the Church. My mother had taken only what she could carry. One rainy afternoon, when my father had gone next door to fix a pipe, I emptied the bags on to the floor and saw my mother in every jumper and blouse and skirt I held up. I used to watch her dress and she let me. Sometimes, she asked my opinion about colours or what suited her more, this blouse or that blouse? And she’d follow my advice and tell me how right I was. I took off my clothes and put on a skirt first, then a blouse, a cardigan, and slowly I became her in miniature. She’d taken her good shoes, so I slipped on a pair of mid-height heels many sizes too big, of course, and placed a handbag on my arm. I stood in front of the mirror, and saw the infinite possibilities of play. I strutted, I

This had always been the worst time when the quiet emptiness could leave him gasping for breath. She was there, his wife, a peripheral shadow moving across a doorway, or in the reflection of a window, and he had to stop looking for her. And the whiskey helped – helped him walk past her when the fire was doused. But occasionally she followed him up the stairs and that’s why he began to take the bottle with him, because she stood in the corner of their bedroom and watched him undress, and when he was on the verge of sleep, she leant over him and asked him things like, Remember when we first met?

I’ve asked Carol to marry me. What? Just now? No, said his father with a rare laugh. For the last 20 years. She’s always said no. Really? Says she doesn’t want me telling her what to do with her money. And I thought she was just being modern, Ellis smiled. Yeah, that too. But she said I had to get your permission first. Mine? So that’s what I’m asking. You have it. You can think about it — — Nothing to think about. But you might feel different later. I won’t. Just marry her, Dad. Marry her. His father took off his cap and smoothed his hair. He put the cap back on. Painting’s upstairs, he said.

I’m not sure what I believe, I say, sharply. No one deserves to go through this. That’s all I know. You’re lovely. I leave the room. I take my rage out on the kettle and cutlery drawer. The nurses can hear me make the tea, fucking London can hear me make the tea. Onto a plate, I pile biscuits that I don’t even feel like eating, and return to his room. How are you with food? I ask him. Not too good right now, he says. These are mine then, I say, and I sit down and place the chocolate bourbons on my lap. You’ll get fat, he says. I am fat, and I lift up my jumper. This wasn’t here yesterday, I say. This is trespassing.

I feel empty finally and wonder why that's a good feeling. I drink water, and it's warm. It leaves my thirst unquenced. I can veer off this track any time I want to. I come across signposts to towns and hotels and could easily divert and seek comfort, but I don't. I'm forcing myself into this solitude and keep on walking. There's something about movement, the necessity of movement, to deal with trauma. Academic papers have been written about it, and I've read them, how animals shake to release fear in their muscles. I do that too. Under the sun, amidst the scrub, I shake, I shout, I scream. So I keep to the track, transfixed by the motion of walking. Trusting in an invisible remedy that will make me feel human once again.

He heard the back door open and close. Carol, of course. Smelled her before he could see her. He’d never asked them when the affair began but always presumed it ran along invisible tracks parallel to his parents’ marriage. Mum had the painting and he had Carol. Truce. /It’s hard being born here, breathing this air. It becomes part of you, whether you want it to or not. Those lights become dawn and dusk. Mum used to say that. Did she? We were friends once. I never knew that. In the early days, we were. But the she seemed to withdraw. Rarely went out with your dad anymore. Maybe it was being a new mum. I reckon you were enough for her. Lucky Dora, we used to say. Ellis put his arm around her shoulder./ It was hard for us, wasn’t it? Getting to know each other? We know each other now, said Ellis. Yeah. And you know you’re too good for him. I know, said Carol, and they laughed. Do you think he’s alright? said Ellis, looking back to the house. Course he is. He’s just used to being a bastard. He’s one of them men who discovered later on that he’s got a heart.

And for the four remaining days - the ninety-six remaining hours - we mapped out a future away from everything we knew. When the walls of the map were breached, we gave one another courage to build them again. And we imagined our home an old stone barn filled with junk and wine and paintings, surrounded by fields of wildflowers and bees. I remember our final day in the villa. We were supposed to be going that evening, taking the sleeper back to England. I was on edge, a mix of nerves and excitement, looking out to see if he made the slightest move toward leaving, but he didn’t. Toiletries remained on the bathroom shelves, clothes stayed scattered across the floor. We went to the beach as usual, lay side by side in our usual spot. The heat was intense and we said little, certainly nothing of our plans to move up to Provence, to the lavender and light. To the fields of sunflowers. I looked at my watch. We were almost there. It was happening. I kept saying to myself, he’s going to do it. I left him on the bed dozing, and went out to the shop to get water and peaches. I walked the streets as if they were my new home. Bonjour to everyone, me walking barefoot, oh so confident, free. And I imagined how we’d go out later to eat, and we’d celebrate at our bar. And I’d phone Mabel and Mabel would say, I understand. I raced back to the villa, ran up the stairs and died. Our rucksacks were open on the bed, our shoes already packed away inside. I watched him from the door. He was silent, his eyes red. He folded his clothes meticulously, dirty washing in separate bags. I wanted to howl. I wanted to put my arms around him, hold him there until the train had left the station. I’ve got peaches and water for the journey, I said. Thank you, he said. You think of everything. Because I love you, I said. He didn’t look at me. The change was happening too quickly. Is there a taxi coming? My voice was weak, breaking. Madame Cournier’s taking us. I went to open the window, the scent of tuberose strong. I lit a cigarette and looked at the sky. An airplane cast out a vivid orange wake that ripped across the violet wash. And I remember thinking, how cruel it was that our plans were out there somewhere. Another version of our future, out there somewhere, in perpetual orbit. The bottle of pastis? he said. I smiled at him. You take it, I said. We lay in our bunks as the sleeper rattled north and retraced the journey of ten days before. The cabin was dark, an occasional light from the corridor bled under the door. The room was hot and airless, smelled of sweat. In the darkness, he dropped his hand down to me and waited. I couldn’t help myself, I reached up and held it. Noticed my fingertips were numb. We’ll be OK, I remember thinking. Whatever we are, we’ll be OK. We didn’t see each other for a while back in Oxford. We both suffered, I know we did, but differently. And sometimes, when the day loomed gray, I’d sit at my desk and remember the heat of that summer. I’d remember the smells of tuberose that were carried by the wind, and the smell of octopus cooking on the stinking griddles. I’d remember the sound of our laughter and the sound of a doughnut seller, and I’d remember the red canvas shoes I lost in the sea, and the taste of pastis and the taste of his skin, and a sky so blue it would defy anything else to be blue again. And I’d remember my love for a man that almost made everything possible./