Claire North Quotes

Luck is sometimes merciful. The Game never is.
Claire North
So each generation set out to find more of its kind, and within just a few cycles of birth and death, the Club had spread not only through space, but also time, propagating itself forwards into the twentieth century and back into the Middle Ages, the death of each member spreading the word of what it was to the very extremes of the times in which they lived.
Claire North
For a second, my hand touched yours, but that second is gone, and cannot be seen, heard or felt ever again. This second is gone, too, the moment in which I spoke by your side. It is dead. Let it die.
Claire North
After a night of drinking, she would be a pale, starling-sized creature, but now, in this place, she is moonlight in heels.
Claire North
The press, the media, the internet—they'll make the noise, make the screaming, the screaming all the time, and the truth and my voice will be lost. The blaming and the noise, human things, they'll make it about human things, not the truth. How can anyone live with it? How can anyone live with so much screaming in their lives, all the time?
Claire North
All the bad publicity they brought down on us, yes, it came, and yes, it hurt us—for a day. That’s how long the dirt clung, maybe a bit less. Twitter, Facebook, TV and internet news—you know how long a story stays up on a news website these days, unless it’s about some celebrity scandal? Guess. Go on—guess. Three hours. That’s how much we hurt. And then the world turned, and someone tweeted something new, and everyone retweeted it and moved on, and nothing fucking changes. That’s the world. That’s people power. That’s all it fucking means.
Claire North
Hqve you never heard of priests proclaim that the meek will inherit the earth and wondered if kings of old didn't smile to hear it? Your reward comes after death. Nirvana. The wheel of life turns and we are elevated from animals to women, from women to men, from men to kings, from kings to gods, from gods to... perfection. And what is perfection now? Not crucifixion, not poverty endured patiently on the mountaintop. No--the perfect life is to have an annual salary of £120,000, an Aston Martin, a £1.6million-pound home, a wife, two children and at least two foreign holidays a year. Perfection is an idol built upon oppression. Perfection is the heaven that kept the masses suppressed; the promise of a future life that quells rebellion. Perfection is the self-hatred an overweight woman feels when she sees a slim model on TV; perfection is the resentment the well-paid man experiences when he beholds a miserable billionaire. Perfection kills. Perfection destroys the soul.
Claire North
To regret your soul is to regret your past.
Claire North
Time, it transpires, is not so good at telling after all.
Claire North
There is no greater isolation a man may experience than to be lonely in a crowd.
Claire North
Is there innocence in ignorance? And if there is, do we tolerate other for their innocence's sake?
Claire North
The secret to being unafraid of the darkness is to challenge the darkness to fear you, to raise your eyes sharp to those few souls who stagger by, daring them to believe that you are not, in fact, more frightening than they are.
Claire North
Dr August, there is no greater isolation a man may experience than to be lonely in a crowd. He may nod, and smile, and say the right thing, but even by this pretence his soul is pushed further away from the kinship of men.
Claire North
[We] need people who are kind by instinct, not by effort. But that is what we lack in this time. For progress, we have eaten our souls up, and nothing matters anymore.
Claire North
... I have waited for this day, and grief faded with time.Or did it? Perhaps grief never leaves us but is merely drowned out by a flood of life overwhelming it. Perhaps the wound that bled once is bleeding still, and I did not notice it until now.
Claire North
There is no loss, if you cannot remember what you have lost.
Claire North
You must choose the life you live at the time you live it.
Claire North
In 1789 the French rebelled and found an emperor. The Americans found their freedom from the British and enslaved the Africans. The Arab Spring bloomed and the military and the jihadists seized power. The internet gave us all the power of speech, and what did we discover? That victory goes to he who shouts the loudest, and that reason does not sell.
Claire North
Forgive me," I wrote at the bottom. "I did not think I would break.
Claire North
Words are made by history, we build them and they change meaning through time, but the music they play...
Claire North
And certainly I know I have the capacity within me to be all of that again, to feel all of that again, and know that, while the door may be currently locked, there is a black pit in the bottom of my soul that has no limit to its falling.
Claire North
Wow, that is so deep.'He meant it, of course.'You're really real,' he added breathily. 'Say something else.'I decided he wasn't worth punching, and walked away.
Claire North
The first two tracks were pop songs from the 1970s, sung in Danish in a style that was best described as Abba without joy.
Claire North
Until you have not been free, you cannot understand what freedom means.
Claire North
A funeral procession, the women scream until they fall down in a faint, the men hold them up, the boys cry silently sand swear to take up arms in their father's name. It is the same funeral procession that their fathers saw, their fathers before them, and their grandfathers unto generations unknown, where the same vow was taken.
Claire North
You say 'love' too easily, Kepler.""No, not rally - please don't call me that. The idea that love has to be a blazing romantic thing of monogamous stability is innately ludicrous. You loved your parents, perhaps, because they were the warmth you could flee to. You loved your first childhood crush with a passion that made your lips tingle, your flesh grow light in their presence. You loved your wife with the steadiness of an ocean against the shore; your lover with the blaze of a shooting star, your best friend with the confidence of a mountain. Love is a many-splendorous thing, as the old song says....
Claire North
We all die. We don't have to live our lives fearing it.
Claire North
What is the purpose of history? It seeds only hate. All the history books should be burnt, so that we are no longer the peoples of our lands, but merely peoples...
Claire North
Have you ever or are you now involved in espionage or sabotage, or in terrorist activities, or genocide? I think we can put a big yes down for all of the above.
Claire North
Have you ever or are you now involved in espionage or sabotage, or in terrorist activities, or genocide? I think we can put a big yes down for all of the above.
Claire North