Deborah Levy

Now that we were mothers we were all shadows of our former selves, chased by the women we used to be before we had children.

The world loved the delusion more than it loved the mother.

It required us to be passive but ambitious, maternal but erotically energetic, self-sacrificing but fulfilled — we were to be Strong Modern Women whilst being subjected to all kinds of humiliations, both economic and domestic.

‘No woman is really an insider in the institutions fathered by masculine consciousness.’

The house a woman creates is a Utopia.

Perhaps when Orwell described sheer egoism as a necessary quality for a writer, he was not thinking about the sheer egoism of a female writer. Even the most arrogant female writer has to work over time to build an ego that is robust enough to get her through January, never mind all the way to December.

I was lost because I had missed the turning to the hotel, but I think I wanted to get lost to see what happened next.

I thought I was not thinking about the past, the past was thinking about me.

Smoking cheap Spanish filthy sock-tobacco under a pine tree was so much better than trying to hold it together on escalators.

He wanted to know more about my life as a concert pianist.
I realized I was holding my breath.
Perhaps my life had shattered to such a degree there was no point in putting it together again for Tomas.