Kate Morton, The House at Riverton
14 quotes
"Those who live in memories are never really dead."
"It'll be a change," says Marcus. "Something different.""Not a mystery."Marcus laughs. "No. Not a mystery. Just a nice safe history."Ah, my darling. But there is no such thing."
"I sound contemptuous, but I am not. I am interested--intrigued even--by the way time erases real lives, leaving only vague imprints. Blood and spirit fade away so that only names and dates remain."
"Wars make history seem deceptively simple. They provide clear turning points, easy distinctions.: before and after, winner and loser, right and wrong. True history, the past, is not like that. It isn't flat or linear. It has no outline. It is slippery, like liquid; infinite and unknowable, like space. And it is changeable: just when you think you see a pattern, perspective shifts, an alternate version is proffered, a long-forgotten memory resurfaces."
"It is a cruel, ironical art, photography. The dragging of captured moments into the future; moments that should have been allowed to be evaporate into the past; should exist only in memories, glimpsed through the fog of events that came after. Photographs force us to see people before their future weighed them down...."
"There was some part of me that never left that house. Rather, some part of the house that wouldn't leave me."
"...home is a magnet that lures back even its most abstracted children. But whether tomorrow or years from now, I cannot guess."
"It's a cruel, ironical art, photography. The dragging of captured moments into the future; moments that should have been allowed to evaporate with the past, should exist only in memories glimpsed through the fog of events that came after. Photography forces us to see people before their future weighed down on them. Before they knew their endings."
"Poisons are more my thing"
"I had forgotten, I suppose, that there were bright memories in amongst the dark."
"As if I hadn't spent a lifetime pretending to forget."
"And I knew then that there would be no telling me what he saw. I understand somehow that certain images, certain sounds, could not be shared and could not be lost."
"Ah, my darling. But there is no such thing [as a nice safe history]."
"Give someone more time and they'll appear to have done more with it."