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.”

“When the love of your life dies, the problem is not that some part of you dies too, which it does, but that some part of you is still alive.”

“It's as if my footprints were already on the road before I even got there.I walk into them, my waiting footprints.”

“The sound of his sleep, the snores and sighs and small noices, is company.”

“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”

“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.”

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

“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.”