Quotes From "Wish I Was Here" By Jackie Kay

The sound of his sleep, the snores and sighs and small noices, is company. Jackie Kay

I've never seen grief like it. Grief like that, it's like an animal. She's not eating. She's not sleeping. She's whimpering. She's sluggish. She's not herself Jackie Kay

You cannot penalize a man for one slip. Then she lay wondering about the word slip. When you slip, you fall, but maybe it is not such a sore fall because you have slipped. Jackie Kay

You noticed things. You're not sure when you start. It's only when you've noticed - noticed that you know you've noticed. Maybe between the first time when you're staring to think, Is this what I think it is? and the second time when you think, Yes, between those two times, there's a silence. A pause. Jackie Kay

I've started to feel very odd within my own life. It's most peculiar to feel lonely inside your own life. Jackie Kay

The beautiful have so much easier a time of it than the ugly, don't you think? They get smiled at the whole time. Strangers offer them things. People notice the beautiful; the beautiful are constantly acknowledged. Jackie Kay

They never tell you about that either. How the hardest thing a mother has to do is give her child up, let them go, watch them run. Jackie Kay

How bizarre, i think to myself, to be on a train and to actually not want to arrive anywhere? What kind of madness is that? Jackie Kay

What a thing it is to have music that plays your terrible thoughts. I imagined that one piece could drive more delicate women than myself to insanity. Jackie Kay

When it rains like that, dark in the afternoon, you feel like you've been taken into the past. Jackie Kay

I didn't feel like I was missing anything. Nor did I feel ambitious any more. It all seemed stupid wanting to be better than the others in the same ring, shallow, pointless. Jackie Kay