Pat Barker Quotes

Another person's life, observed from the outside, always has a shape and definition that one's own life lacks.

It's the hardest thing in the world to go on being aware of someone else's pain.

You know you're walking around with a mask on, and you desperately want to take it off and you can't because everybody else thinks it's your face.

The past is a palimpsest. Early memories are always obscured by accumulations of later knowledge.

I don't think it's possible to c-call yourself a C-Christian and... and j-just leave out the awkward bits.' -Wilfred Owen

Looking straight at the world is part of your duty as a writer.

The sky darkened, the air grew colder, but he didn't mind. It didn't occur to him to move. This was the right place. This was where he had wanted to be.

Murder is only killing in the wrong place.

Culturally, the First World War is the war that stands in for other wars.

A society that devours its own young deserves no automatic or unquestioning allegiance.

Half the world's work is done by hopeless neurotics.

The result was I went nowhere.