Jenni Fagan > Quotes

“I dinnae get people, like they all want to be watched, to be seen, like all the time. They put up their pictures online and let people they dinnae like look at them! And people they’ve never met as well, and they all pretend tae be shinier than they are – and some are even posting on like four sites; their bosses are watching them at work, the cameras watch them on the bus, and on the train, and in Boots, and even outside the chip shop. Then even at home – they’re going online to look and see who they can watch, and to check who’s watching them!”
― Jenni Fagan, The Panopticon

“When grown-ups hear a little dark door creaking in their hearts they turn the telly up. They slug a glass of wine. They tell the cat it was just a door creaking. The cat knows. It jumps down from the sofa and walks out of the room. When that little dark door in a heart starts to go click-clack click-clack click-clack click-clack so loudly and violently their chest shows an actual beat - well, then they say they've got bad cholesterol and they try to quit using butter, they begin to go for walks.
When the tiny dark door in her heart creaks open, she will walk right through it.
She will lie down and inside her own heart like a bird in the night.”
― Jenni Fagan, The Sunlight Pilgrims

“- You know what really brings the storms, Geillis?
- What?
- A storm arrives at the exact second when a girl learns she'll never be free”
― Jenni Fagan, Hex

“As specimens go, they always get excited about me. I'm a good one. A show-stopper. I'm the kind of kid they'll still enquire about ten years later. Fifty-one placements, drug problems, violence, dead adopted mum, no biological links, constant offending. Tick, tick, tick. I lure them in to being with. Cultivate my specimen face. They like that. Do-gooders are vomit-worthy. Damaged goods are dangerous. The ones that are in it cos the thought it would be a step up from an office job are tedious. The ones who've been in too long lose it. The ones who think they've got the Jesus touch are fucking insane. The I can save you brigade are particularly radioactive. They think if you just inhale some of their middle-classism, then you'll be saved.”
― Jenni Fagan, The Panopticon

“Clowns are vicious--they're all nefarious grins--and if you hung out with a bunch of clowns in a bar, pretty soon it would turn into a horror movie. Nefarious means evil. It's nothing to do with Rastas.”
― Jenni Fagan

“Put those heels away. That click, click, click, click is Morse code for rapists. It says their sentence will be lenient or non-existent. If only she didn't wear stilettos. If only she didn't walk through a park. If only she didn't go out at night.”
― Jenni Fagan, Hex

“- What do you women do in hundreds of years from now then Iris from the ether?
- We look over our shoulder far too often.
- Aye.
You laugh wryly.
- We try to look bigger than we are sometimes. At other times we have to be smaller than we are. We do other things. Try to take down governments. Make great art. Keep others. Work without anyone noticing what we do for whole lifetimes sometimes. We hold hands. Drink too much or not at all. We traverse boundaries whilst looking ordinary. We give beauty and patience and science and our talent and our hearts and what was once firm in our bodies - we bestow our lives to this world, most often unseen.
Jenni Fagan - Hex”
― Jenni Fagan, Hex

“...the child of a wolf may not feel like she has fangs until she finds herself facing the moon, but they are still there the whole time regardless.”
― Jenni Fagan, The Sunlight Pilgrims

“A woman’s voice is a hex. She must learn to exalt men always. If she doesn’t do that, then she is a threat. A demon whore, a witch – so says everyone and the law”.”
― Jenni Fagan, Hex

“My words exist in here you see, in my mind. Then they exist in your mind. Nobody else gets to see how they pass between us - it is a form of alchemy! Of all the art forms writing is the most intimate and strange.”
― Jenni Fagan, Luckenbooth

“Now he knows something he did not know before—there is a totality to silence. It makes his bones ache.”
― Jenni Fagan, The Sunlight Pilgrims

“Girls learn to shine in secret.”
― Jenni Fagan, Hex

“I'm going to draw up a human-rights contract that says everyone on earth must agree we are here as caretakers of the planet, first and foremost.”
― Jenni Fagan, The Sunlight Pilgrims

“The brightness of the stars!
I needed them, so I did just the one thing. And it is really this they are killing me for.
I went out at night.
Alone.”
― Jenni Fagan, Hex

“Edinburgh seduces with her ancient buildings. She pours alcohol or food down the throats of anyone passing, dangles her trinkets, leaves pockets bare. She's a pickpocket. The best kind of thief, one you think of - most fondly.”
― Jenni Fagan, Luckenbooth

“We learn there are many reasons not to draw the eyes of men towards us; and if we do, there can be no gain in it. We dip our head first. We are meant not to raise our gaze, and that has been bored into us for centuries. We are meant to never let a look appear too direct. Don't be confrontational. Play nice - so nobody kills you.”
― Jenni Fagan

“Why would you clone a human when you can’t even look after the humans who already exist?”
― Jenni Fagan, Luckenbooth

“she reaches a pale arm up into the sky and polishes the moon”
― Jenni Fagan, The Sunlight Pilgrims

“Whilst I complain about Edinburgh, I like it here really. They say that makes me dour, it’s Scottish for miserable bastard. They gave a single word in a Gaelic that means ‘my eternal doom is upon me’, I can’t remember it right now. They are an old nation. They have a great wit at times. They need it to survive the damn weather.”
― Jenni Fagan, Luckenbooth

“The watching feeling is getting worse.

I am not an experiment.

I am not a stupid joke, or a trippy game, or an experiment. I will not go insane. Something bad is gonnae happen, though. I can feel it. It’s in the way that crisp bag has faded from the rain. I am not an experiment. If I keep saying it, I’ll start believing it. I have to try. I am not an experiment. It doesnae sound convincing. It sounds stupid.

Try it in German. Ich bin nicht eine experiment. My German’s shite. Inhale slowly to the count of four, look hard at the tip of my nose and try again. This time I go for an official BBC broadcaster circa-1940 accent.

Today, one finds one is not, in actual fact, a social experiment. One is a real person. This is real actual skin as seen containing the bodily organs of a real actual human being with a heart and soul and dreams.

It’s true that I came from real people once too, and they were a jolly old sort, with no naked psycho-ess in any way.

I, the young Miss Anais, understand wholly that I am just a human being that no one is interested in. No experiment. No outside fate. I am not that important, and that is just fine by me. I propose a stiff upper lip and onward Christian soldiers, quick-bloody-march! This is Anais Hendricks, telling the nation: to be me is really quite spiff-fucking-spoff, lashings of love, your devoted BBC broadcaster since 1938.”
― Jenni Fagan, The Panopticon

“The thing is, Bill, and you know this – wealthy men make mistakes. Working-class men commit murder. Then they get hanged. Not as a deterrent tae murdering women, noh, they have little reason tae try and deter that – fear ay that and rape helps keep women in oor place, it’s why they hardly ever convict them firrit. They killed that man to warn the great unwashed – to warn other working-class men – watch yer fucking step ay. We can just fucking hang your kind!”
― Jenni Fagan, Luckenbooth

“The girls changing in the gym watched her from the other side of the room the first time she went in, and one of the nuns was sitting there as well, just because Stella was there. They took her into a meeting in school and she had to say in advance that she wasn't a lesbian, or they wouldn't have let her even try to use the girls' changing room. They asked her if she was still a Christian. She explained that her family are not religious. They asked her what she knew of damnation. She asked them what they knew of autonomy. They asked her how she knew that word. She asked if they had met her mother. They said they would pray for her. She said it was not necessary. They asked if she might feel different in a few months, or if perhaps she would simply change for gym in the janitor's cupboard. She said she'd felt like this her whole life and no amount of praying was going to change it and she could use the janitor's cupboard to change, but she was a person, not a broom. They said she needed to find Jesus. She asked if it was like finding Wally? Only one nun knew what she meant. That little drawing in those old comic strips her mum had, when you look for the dweeby guy in the stripy hat.”
― Jenni Fagan, The Sunlight Pilgrims

“- We take our chances if we go out after darkness.
We often walk down the middle of the road at night.
- Same.
- We know that every close or alley or road might appear like it has an exit, but it may in fact be one without an end.
- Aye.
- If the State wanted us less dead, they'd do more about our murders.
- They don't?
- It depends.”
― Jenni Fagan, Hex

“. She focuses, trying to absorb the suns’ energy deep into her cells so when they descend into the darkest winter for 200 years, in the quietest minutes, when the whole world experiences a total absence of light — she will glow, and glow, and glow.”
― Jenni Fagan, The Sunlight Pilgrims

“I’ve got the voice of a siren – it’s not a voice to launch a thousand ships, it’s a voice to sink them.”
― Jenni Fagan, Hex

“My ma said: only love a man who reads books and understands them properly. If they don't read books don't go their bed. Ever!”
― Jenni Fagan, Luckenbooth

“Life is so much more than we can manage it to be, it is so much more sudden than we are able to understand.”
― Jenni Fagan, Luckenbooth

“I want to cry and hit my head off the wall—and scream until I pass out, but I gave that up for Lent.”
― Jenni Fagan, The Panopticon

“How can women be truth-tellers when we brought down the Garden of Eden and are weak for such deceit and evil?”
― Jenni Fagan, Hex

“She will lie down and sleep inside her own heart like a bird in the night.”
― Jenni Fagan, The Sunlight Pilgrims