The Promise Quotes

“As she starts to read, the book travels into her from a long distance, from his mind to mine, across a gap in time, and now she’s not in the room any more, she’s inside the sentences, one joined to the next like a series of tunnels, connected to each other at angles.”
― Damon Galgut, The promise

“What happens in a room lingers there invisibly, all deeds, all words, always. Not seen, not heard, except by some, and even then imperfectly. In this very room both birth and death have taken place. Long ago, maybe, but the blood is still visible on certain days, when time wears thin.”
― Damon Galgut, The Promise

“then he’s gone. She can hear him walking away up the passage. His footsteps sound hesitant, but he doesn’t turn back. Nor will the moment return, which is true of all moments, though not equally.”
― Damon Galgut, The promise

“Odd how certain people, often random individuals, can pulse with significance in your thoughts, your dreams”
― Damon Galgut, The Promise

“Foolish old earth, returning and repeating itself, over and over. Never misses a show. How can you bear it, you ancient tart, giving the identical performance again and again, evenings and matinées, while the theatre crumbles around you, the lines in the script unchanging, to say nothing of the make-up, the costumes, the extravagant gestures … Tomorrow and tomorrow and the day after that …”
― Damon Galgut, The Promise

“A human figure approaching, filling itself in slowly, putting on age and sex and race, like items of clothing, till she's looking at a black boy, also thirteen years old, wearing ragged shorts and T-shirt, broken takkies on his feet.”
― Damon Galgut, The Promise

“Waiting in respectful silence is an essential part of the job and he has developed the capacity to simulate deep calm while experiencing none of it. In his core, Mervyn Glass is a frantic man.”
― Damon Galgut, The promise

“Apartheid has fallen, see, we die right next to each other now, in intimate proximity. It's just the living part we still have to work out.”
― Damon Galgut, The Promise

“She feels ugly when she cries, like a tomato breaking open,”
― Damon Galgut, The promise

“Oh, i can deal with the tragedy, it's the farce I can't handle.”
― Damon Galgut, The Promise

“You understand, he says, people don't always take what you give to them. Not every chance is an opportunity. Sometimes a chance is just a waste of time.”
― Damon Galgut, The Promise

“But you think there’s an order, you think your actions matter, that they’ll be weighed and judged in some final reckoning. But there is no reckoning. For each of us, death is the last day.”
― Damon Galgut, The Promise

“He's dropped outside the main entrance to the hospital and has to find his way like a little germ through miles of intestinal passages.”
― Damon Galgut, The Promise

“His footsteps sound hesitant, but he doesn’t turn back. Nor will the moment return, which is true of all moments, though not equally.”
― Damon Galgut, The Promise

“A human figure approaching, filling itself in slowly, putting on age and sex and race, like items of clothing,”
― Damon Galgut, The Promise

“Most of their conversations are in the past by now. They've reached that stage in the proceedings and both of them know it and don't speak of that either. But there is still great softness in two hands linked together on a tabletop.”
― Damon Galgut, The Promise

“Finally, Astrid begins to weep. Always a purging moment. Temperamentally speaking Astrid took to Catholicism easily, or the other way around, her conversion felt natural. Her new faith, which she experiences as a kind of waterproof garment she's buttoned down over herself, doesn't stop her acting on her fears and desires, but it provides a way of washing them off afterwards. She will receive her penance and the karmic clock will be set again to zero and she will swear to the priest that she will follow his instructions, that this is the last, last time, she will ever stray, and she will deeply mean it.”
― Damon Galgut, The Promise

“time is a river that washes the world away.”
― Damon Galgut, The Promise

“How would you know she is a ghost? Many of the living are vague and adrift too, it’s not a failing unique to the departed.”
― Damon Galgut, The Promise

“headachy”
― Damon Galgut, The Promise

“No love left, only kindness,”
― Damon Galgut, The Promise

“Apartheid has fallen, see, we die right next to each other now, in intimate proximity. It’s just the living part we still have to work out.”
― Damon Galgut, The Promise

“Snails unfurl themselves in the undergrowth and push forth, little galleons on a dark green sea, trailing their thin silver wakes.”
― Damon Galgut, The Promise

“Her own voice sounds echoey, as if somebody else is speaking.”
― Damon Galgut, The Promise

“Coldly furious now, the steel showing.”
― Damon Galgut, The Promise

“You come back after long vanishment and the surface closes as if you were never gone. Family quicksand.”
― Damon Galgut, The Promise

“Her husband’s foot touches hers, she pulls her foot away. Terrible to flinch from what you once, briefly, loved, or thought you did, or wanted to think you did. But are shackled to, regardless, for life.”
― Damon Galgut, The Promise

“For she too has her little pains, and they wear her out, though she does not speak of them, or is not asked, and when they show themselves it tends to be when she's alone.”
― Damon Galgut, The Promise

“But enough, we are the rainbow nation, which is to say it’s a mixed and motley and mongrel assembly in the church today, restive and ill at ease, like antagonistic elements from the periodic table.”
― Damon Galgut, The Promise

“The universe is somehow always set at an angle to his wants, but this is not the moment for resistance. He turns off the television.”
― Damon Galgut, The Promise