Pat Barker Quotes
I didn't belong to the sort of family where the children's classics were laid on. I went to the public library and read everything I could get my hands on.
Quotes to Explore
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Hands down, the biggest thrill is to get a letter from a kid saying, I loved your book. Will you write me another one?
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Before I left Russia in 1999, I was living in a very poor factory town with my family and friends, and nothing was ever going to change.
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In my memoir, I admit that I've been as fearful of success as of failure. In fact, when 'Passages' was published, I so dreaded bad reviews that I ran away to Italy with a girlfriend and our children to hide out.
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I've been quite fascinated by the relative insignificance of human existence, the shortness of life. We might as well be a letter in a word in a sentence on a page in a book in a library in a city in one country in this enormous universe! And that kind of fear and insignificance has kept me awake at night.
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Do our children now have to choose between getting an education and dying? Some of us cannot move on and accept that kind of society.
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I'm not going to break up my family, not for a book.
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You have another little drink, and I'll have another little drink, and maybe we can work up some real family feeling here.
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It's a notion that career-oriented women often neglect their families. But we should cut them some flak; these women are doing everything for the sake of family so that it progresses. I believe when kids see their mothers working hard, they take up responsibilities at home and are far more well-turned out than other children.
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Even very young children need to be informed about dying. Explain the concept of death very carefully to your child. This will make threatening him with it much more effective.
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Instead of getting angry at somebody for opposing you on something, you're just praying for them. You just pray blessings on them, blessings on their family.
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If you want the government off your back, get your hands out of its pockets.
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The Saints are the elect children of the spouse of Christ, the precious fruit of her body; they are her crown of glory. And when these dear children quit her to reap their eternal reward, the mother retains precious memorials of them and holds up their example to her other children to encourage them to follow their glorious traces.
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We weren't dirt poor, but there was no spare money kicking around. While it was very much understood that the way to a better life was through education, books were a luxury we couldn't afford. But when I was six, we actually moved opposite the central library, and that became my home from home.
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We must respect the other fellow's religion, but only in the sense and to the extent that we respect his theory that his wife is beautiful and his children smart.
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I believe wealth should be in the hands of those who know how to create more wealth.
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I think all children draw, as soon as they figure out the thumb and can grab crayons. The only difference with people like myself is that we never stopped drawing.
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As wonderful as being on stage is, family comes first.
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Real Texans believe in looking out for each other. We believe in honoring our mothers and fathers and keeping our smallest residents - our children - healthy.
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Returning to your family and where you came from, and your history... this is what makes you strong. It's not looking out that's going to do that - it's looking in.
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Family was a fertile breeding ground for the kind of psychological bacteria that warped minds and devoured hope.
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I hope to be at the top of my game when I'm 65 or 70. I don't want to reach my peak at 29. Not that I'm holding back anything, but there's a bunch of junk I don't know.
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Fighting for one's freedom, struggling towards being free, is like struggling to be a poet or a good Christian or a good Jew or a good Muslim or good Zen Buddhist. You work all day long and achieve some kind of level of success by nightfall, go to sleep and wake up the next morning with the job still to be done. So you start all over again.
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I really hope my peers appreciate and respect what I'm doing.
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I didn't belong to the sort of family where the children's classics were laid on. I went to the public library and read everything I could get my hands on.
