“There's no theme, no moral to be learned, except for the knowledge that lightning can strike from a clear blue sky one morning and take away everything you've built, everything you've counted on, leaving wreckage and no meaning behind. It can happen to anyone, it can happen to you.”
Damon Galgut“Memory is fiction . . . All memory is a way of reconstructing the past. . . The act of narrating a memory is the act of creating fiction. [Armitstead, Claire. “Damon Galgut talks about his novel In a Strange Room.” The Guardian. 10 September 2010.]”
Damon Galgut, In a Strange Room“Stationery gets me excited because it has an individual character, unlike computers, which may be convenient but are generic and bland.”
Damon Galgut“Goldie was a believer in the imperial project, which is to say, in the civilising power of social progress.”
Damon Galgut“Of what earthly use were novels? How did they help anybody?”
Damon Galgut, Arctic Summer“A silence followed, while the two men contemplated dying for love.”
Damon Galgut, Arctic Summer“It is always an attractive moment when curiosity takes hold.”
Damon Galgut, Arctic Summer“No emotion was supposed to cross the great divide of class. Affection could erase all hierarchy; in this was the danger, and the delight.”
Damon Galgut, Arctic Summer“If I had done this, if I had said that, in the end you are always more tormented by what you didn't do than what you did, actions already performed can always be rationalized in time, the neglected deed might have changed the world.”
Damon Galgut, In a Strange Room