Dreda Say Mitchell > Quotes

“Others may wait for their candles to be blown out. I’m merely blowing out my own”.”
― Dreda Say Mitchell, Spare Room

“I stare at the writing on the wall. Hypnotised. Can’t look away. The author has a strong hand. Each letter energetic; bold strokes. Such funny shapes. Such jagged, edged lines. A patchwork woven in the deepest black ink. I reach out to touch its upright, elegant beauty. I gasp as it starts to grow. Big and threatening. Its lines stretch into long, long legs. Its shapes swell into mouths with sharp teeth that transform into gigantic knives. It jumps off the wall, out at me. I scream. Try to run away. Too late. A blade slashes me in the back. I fall. Agonising pain rips through me. I beg for mercy. The knife is a huge needle now heading for my face…”
― Dreda Say Mitchell, Spare Room

“beauty is only skin deep. It’s on the inside where your true beauty lies. And here.’ She took my small hand and laid it over my heart.”
― Dreda Say Mitchell, Spare Room

“Once something takes root in my head I can’t let go. It grows and grows until I’m sure my mind’s not my own. Now I’ve got a dead man queuing up with all my other problems.”
― Dreda Say Mitchell, Spare Room

“Where the wicked cease from troubling and the weary are at rest”.”
― Dreda Say Mitchell, Spare Room

“Like all children, I find my parents irritating from time to time but they’ve never stabbed me in the back.”
― Dreda Say Mitchell, Spare Room

“Russian poet Etienne Solanov. He was a friend, a sidekick, of Pushkin’s.”
― Dreda Say Mitchell, Spare Room

“Sometimes I think I’m living someone else’s life. That this isn’t the life I was meant to have.”
― Dreda Say Mitchell, Spare Room

“We both shuffle our feet, back in the uncomfortable zone.”
― Dreda Say Mitchell, Spare Room

“I’m also acutely conscious of the fact that my parents have never in my life been disloyal to me and I don’t want to be disloyal to them.”
― Dreda Say Mitchell, Spare Room

“Los secretos de aquella casa debían ser enterrados para siempre.”
― Dreda Say Mitchell, Spare Room, The

“A woman looking out for a woman. That phrase does something so simple:”
― Dreda Say Mitchell, Say Her Name

“It was Sugar who drilled into me the importance of books. He encouraged me to read a page of the dictionary every day. ‘Increase your word power, girl. Words are power.’ And he took me on weekly visits to this great, magical building called a library.”
― Dreda Say Mitchell

“When death approaches the care we offer is one of comfort and dignity.”
― Dreda Say Mitchell, Say Her Name

“Guilt is a powerful emotion. Dangerous. The things we do in the past have the power to destroy us in the present.”
― Dreda Say Mitchell, Girl, Missing

“was to find out if the body”
― Dreda Say Mitchell, Girl, Missing

“I’m not like other girls.”
― Dreda Say Mitchell, Girl, Missing

“Don’t ever let anyone put you down. Always remain loud ’n’ proud. Collect your dreams. Stash them away. Treasure them.”
― Dreda Say Mitchell, Say Her Name

“It’s wrong to live your life through your kids. All you can do is support her on her own path”
― Dreda Say Mitchell, Blood Mother

“I’ll be all right when my dad comes.’ Mac felt the words oozing in his stomach. He took the boy’s small hand and squeezed it. Milos swallowed. ‘Is it the day?’ ‘What day?’ ‘The day Daddy doesn’t come back? He said that there might be a day when he has to go away, just like his dad did with him. He told me to be brave, to hold my head tall . . . No, up high, my head up high and no crying.’ But there were already tears gathered in the bottom of his eyes. ‘Uncle Mac, could you ring him up to find out if it’s the day?”
― Dreda Say Mitchell, Vendetta

“There are so many labels for people like me with one parent who is black, the other white. The problem is, if I’m two of something, why do I feel like one of nothing?”
― Dreda Say Mitchell, Say Her Name

“Don’t go back there. Hurt. Tears. Chaos. These are the devils waiting for you when you go backwards in life, Eva.’ He tipped up my chin. ‘Only ever gaze forward.”
― Dreda Say Mitchell, Say Her Name

“Our biggest enemy is our past, because we allow it to keep destroying us right to the doorway of our grave.”
― Dreda Say Mitchell, Believe Me