Top 40 Bethan Roberts Quotes (2024 Update)

1. “This life, as he put it. Meaning my life. Meaning the lives of others. Meaning the morally dissolute. The sexually criminal. Meaning those whom society has condemned to isolation, fear and self-loathing.”

— Bethan Roberts

2. “DUM-de, went my trochaic heart.”

— Bethan Roberts

3. “I imagined him rising from the sea like Neptune, half draped in bladderwrack, his neck studded with barnacles, a crab hanging from his hair; he’d remove the creature and fling it aside as he shrugged off the waves. He’d make his way noiselessly up the beach towards me, despite the pebbles, and would take me in his arms and carry me back to wherever it was he’d come from.”

— Bethan Roberts

4. “Then he took my fingers from his lips and, pressing them against his groin, he asked, “Can you share?” “Share?” “Can you share me?” I felt him harden, and I nodded. “If that’s what it takes. Yes. I can share.” And then I was on my knees before him.”

— Bethan Roberts

5. “His smile is like a harvest moon. Mysterious. Full of promises.”

— Bethan Roberts

6. “Now I have a name for it, it’s a little easier to dismiss, but no less difficult to ignore.”

— Bethan Roberts

7. “Because when you’re in love with someone for the first time, their name is enough. Just seeing my hand form Tom’s name was enough. Almost.”

— Bethan Roberts

8. “So you’ll know there was tenderness, as well as pain. So you’ll know how we failed, both of us, but also how we both tried.”

— Bethan Roberts

9. “And I want him by your side, too. I hope that he will join us in your room, if only for a little while. I hope that he will come and at least look at you – really look at you – and see what I can see: that despite everything, you still love him. I hope this will break his silence.”

— Bethan Roberts

10. “You were looking at Tom without smiling, with an expression of deep absorption. You considered him, in the same way that others in the room were considering the displays.”

— Bethan Roberts

11. “I don’t mean to be profane, Hazlewood, but aren’t objects of beauty there to be worshipped?”

— Bethan Roberts

12. “Conventions, other people’s opinions, the law, all appear laughable in the face of your desire, your drive to reach your love. it’s a blissful state. it’s fleeting, though, this feeling...”

— Bethan Roberts

13. “L’amour est un oiseau rebelle que nul ne peut apprivoiser.”

— Bethan Roberts

14. “You’re going to make a wonderful portrait,’ I said. ‘Quite wonderful.”

— Bethan Roberts

15. “Dunno much about art.” “You don’t have to. That’s the wonderful thing about it. It’s about reacting to it. Feeling it, if you like. It’s not really anything to do with knowledge.”

— Bethan Roberts

16. “Because when you’re in love with someone for the first time, their name is enough.”

— Bethan Roberts

17. “It was his problem, but it was also his joy.”

— Bethan Roberts

18. “We hadn’t yet become lovers, and in that photo there is something of the promise – and the threat – of what was to come.”

— Bethan Roberts

19. “The most impressive thing about him, to me, is his belief in those wings. Useless, fragile, attached to his arms by a couple of cuffs, and yet he believes in them as a child might believe a cloak will make him invisible.”

— Bethan Roberts

20. “I could have lied, I suppose. But even then I had a terrible dread of being found out. In the end, people always found you out. And when they did, it would be worse than if you’d simply told the truth in the first place.”

— Bethan Roberts

21. “One learns to live as one can.”

— Bethan Roberts

22. “It’s easy to become very focused, I’ve found, on such small things. Especially when every day is the same.”

— Bethan Roberts

23. “When I look over the fields to the sea, on these autumn days when the grass moves in the wind and the waves sound like excited breath, I remember that I once felt intense and secret things, just like you, Patrick. I hope you will understand that and I hope you can forgive that.”

— Bethan Roberts

24. “Porque cuando te enamoras de alguien por primera vez, con su nombre te basta.”

— Bethan Roberts

25. “And won’t he make a wonderful policeman?” you said. “I must say I have my reservations about our boys in blue, but with Tom on the force, I think I’ll sleep more easily in my bed at night.”

— Bethan Roberts

26. “Really, Marion. You have to open your eyes. you’re too bright not to. It’s such a waste.”

— Bethan Roberts

27. “I’m worried I might start laughing with joy. I might start laughing at his youth, at the way he shines, at the way his cheeks are flushed, at the way his eyes are bright with interest. The way his thighs rest together as he sits. The way he holds his exquisite shoulders so square. Or, in this state, I might even start to weep.”

— Bethan Roberts

28. “I just knew. It was only a matter of time. A matter of playing it right. Of not rushing things. Not scaring him off. I knew we could be friends. I knew I could give him something he wanted. It’s the long game with me.”

— Bethan Roberts

29. “Lo observabas de la misma forma que las otras personas de la sala observaban las obras expuestas.”

— Bethan Roberts

30. “We sat together in a front pew. Utterly alone. And we kissed. There in the presence of all the saints and angels, we kissed.”

— Bethan Roberts

31. “I didn’t relish the idea of another long evening, waiting for Tuesday, that was part of it. But in truth, I was feeling puffed up at my success. The boy is to come here, to my apartment. He has agreed. He is coming alone, Tuesday evening. We have looked at Icarus together and he has given me his secret smile and he is coming.”

— Bethan Roberts

32. “It’s difficult, now, to remember exactly how I felt about you on that day, after all that’s happened since.”

— Bethan Roberts

33. “I have no choice, I know that. I can pretend she doesn’t exist and risk losing him altogether, or I can put myself through the ordeal and keep a crumb of him.”

— Bethan Roberts

34. “But to me the wonder was the touch of his hand on mine in that cabin, which was ours alone for the time it took to reach our hotel.”

— Bethan Roberts

35. “No pienso volver a caer en el abismo.”

— Bethan Roberts

36. “Then he smiled. ‘Were you really dreaming of me?”

— Bethan Roberts

37. “I wanted blankeness, I suppose. Not so much an attempt at a new start as a refusal to engage with the process. Perhaps a longing to negate myself from the location altogether.”

— Bethan Roberts

38. “We should live here.’ After just two days of the possibilities of Venice, I said, ‘We should live here.’ And Tom’s answer was, ‘We should fly to the moon.’ But he was smiling.”

— Bethan Roberts

39. “I’d almost forgotten the joy of waking up and, before you’ve even opened your eyes, knowing by the shape of the mattress beneath you, by the warmth of the sheets, that he’s still there.”

— Bethan Roberts

40. “Where’s Tom where’s Tom where’s Tom where’s Tom where’s Tom’, each time a little quieter and a little slower, and I had no answer for you.”

— Bethan Roberts

41. “Beautifully, awfully fleeting.”

— Bethan Roberts

42. “La naturaleza es la obra de arte definitiva. La que siempre estamos tratando de imitar.”

— Bethan Roberts

43. “I say I do everything possible to avoid thinking about Tom, but, of course, Tom is mostly what I think about. And it is hell. Not least because the more I think about him, the more I cannot remember the reasons why we could not be together. The more I think about him, the less I remember anything that was wrong, or difficult. All I remember is sweetness.”

— Bethan Roberts

44. “To think of larger things is madness. A bar of reconstituted soap. A clean chamber pot. A sharper razor blade than yesterday. These things come to mean a lot. They keep one just about sane. They are something to think about that is not Tom. Because to think about my policeman would be hell. I do everything I can to avoid such thoughts.”

— Bethan Roberts

45. “I was typical. So typical.”

— Bethan Roberts

46. “Por la resistencia.”

— Bethan Roberts