The voices / 22 fragments

Glenn Haybittle

Dates not recorded

Name supplied in the contributor-provided quotation collection. Basic attribution label; identity, lifetime and quotation authenticity have not been independently verified.

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Archive entries

01Undated

She is a wiry blanched creature with no beauty. Her expression reminds him of a crumpled letter – there is both sadness and anger in it.

Glenn Haybittle / quote

02Undated

He likes to think of himself as someone who can give quick clever answers to awkward questions. It is an important part of his self-esteem.

Glenn Haybittle / quote

03Undated

Felix has always believed that if there is one thing in life that is fated it is our birth, that far-fetched conspiracy of circumstances which have to occur in order for us to get born.

Glenn Haybittle / quote

04Undated

It’s our memories that teach us who we are.

Glenn Haybittle / quote

05Undated

Never leave home without your memories.

Glenn Haybittle / quote

06Undated

One consequence of ignorance is that it misdirects anger.

Glenn Haybittle / quote

07Undated

To tell a lie is to risk being caught out and there’s excitement in avoiding traps: it was an aspect of my childhood I was perhaps averse to relinquishing.

Glenn Haybittle / quote

08Undated

The act of creation, the impetus to undertake it, is always some kind of feeble attempt to understand one’s own creation, the nature of creation itself.

Glenn Haybittle / quote

09Undated

The temptation to betray a secret, always breathing its hot breath in your ear.

Glenn Haybittle / quote

10Undated

Power needs plots because plots are secret until they unfold and the most gratifying kind of power is holding onto an explosive secret.

Glenn Haybittle / quote

11Undated

The snow, the effect of concealment and secrecy it creates, makes him think of the brutality of the wartime legislation to forbid and violently extract secrets. It is as if the hushed white landscape is showing how sacrosanct are our secrets, how much of our vitality is bound up in them.

Glenn Haybittle / quote

12Undated

Everything sacred begins with a circle of motion.

Glenn Haybittle / quote

13Undated

Today she feels she is the master of her craft. Today she is free of the grinding tyranny of doubt. The voice that mocks her ambition. The voice that bites and slanders and causes her more heartache than any other voice. Today she is focused, she is exultant. Her every brushstroke like a wake of radiance. Today she can move the paint around the canvas at will. If only painting were like this every day. Without the sudden extinguishing of light, the collapsing of belief, the cursing and flailing, the knots and clenched fists in a world gone suddenly dark.

Glenn Haybittle / quote

14Undated

There they are. Dancing in a circle. Shadows swinging over the snow. Calling upon the ancestors. Each wearing the sacred shirt. Side stepping to the left in time to the echoing heartbeat of the drums and the echoing yearning of the songs. There they are. Dancing in a circle. Shadows swinging over the firelit snow. Calling upon the ancestors. Expecting something wonderful to happen. Everyone singing. We will live again. We will live again.

Glenn Haybittle / quote

15Undated

If you’re not going to feel how are you going to know what to think? Isn’t it in the nature of feeling to evolve thought?

Glenn Haybittle / quote

16Undated

Artists, like criminals, are dependent on a jury.

Glenn Haybittle / quote

17Undated

It’s in our dreams that we pull people towards us.

Glenn Haybittle / quote

18Undated

Esme skips on ahead. Jumping from one foot to the other, as if she can see markings on the ground he can’t. She is constantly jumping and skipping and twirling with the lightness of falling snow, looking up at him bright with questions, tugging on his hand, dashing off with all the speed her body is capable of and then skipping on the spot up ahead as if consecrating it for his arrival. It is so easy to make her happy that it seems like cheating at times.

Glenn Haybittle / quote

19Undated

At that moment the ghost dance seems to Zinnia like the relationship of two people who never quite consummate the love they feel for each other.

Glenn Haybittle / quote

20Undated

Every night I build a fire for you, Alowa. Every night I dance on the rooftop for you. Look at the flames, Alowa. Aren’t they beautiful? Look at the smoke. I’m dancing in the smoke, Alowa.

Glenn Haybittle / quote

21Undated

And who isn’t less innocent than they lead us to believe? That’s one of the fundamental truths about human nature.

Glenn Haybittle / quote

22Undated

The cabinets and shelves are a bright busy choreography of oils, shampoos, conditioners, scrubs, lotions, salts, unguents. Zinnia loves buying pots and bottles and tubes of alchemised essences that smell like yearning or intimacy on the skin.

Glenn Haybittle / quote