BookBrief Logo
Milkman
Goodreads ratings
3.56 / 5
Add to Your Library

Sign in to save this book to your reading lists

"Milkman" Quotes

A young woman navigates the complexities of life in 1970s Northern Ireland against the backdrop of political conflict and societal pressures.

Quotes

In this city, all these cities, we're all harmed; we are all victims. Can't we ever let it out that we're hurt, yet genuinely, on a fairly consistent basis, do some things we are happy about?

Anna Burns

To avoid being a political figure in a book was impossible because not being a political figure was a political stance.

Anna Burns

Every time I took a backward step, I ended up in a new, heightened, more sinister version of the previous problem.

Anna Burns

That’s how love travels: evenly and non-discriminately through different lives. It’s true that many lives don’t want it, resigning themselves to getting by. But I’ve noticed it takes control autonomously, ringing out imprecise chimes deafening and insistent on unexpected nights.

Anna Burns

He’d be doing this in order to bolster the spirit of a nation, he said, a nation crushed under the heel of British imperialism. I said but we’re trying to get Shit-Head off this street... he’s the only one in a position to do the copying!

Anna Burns

But there was no convincing myself: I had lost the right to die not from suicide.

Anna Burns

In Rome she’d acquired a pair of black sandals which somehow had made her feel dignified, so ever after she wandered bleak landscape swathed in drear, she couldn’t think of a single reason for re-starting or doing anything else, but at least she had dignity.

Anna Burns

Seems as though he was a self-appointed guardian of standards - of what standards?

Anna Burns

Love stories had basically been possible in the old days.

Anna Burns

He had the most amazing dresses for them girls, would dress them all up the same at family gatherings... all these little-ever-fluttering-blurring dresses with satin bows on their pint-size waists, and all them together magically afloat and miraculously tiny.

Anna Burns