Top 120 Claire North Quotes (2026 Update)
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51. “No one ever considers the question of bladder when dealing with matters of subterfuge.”

— Claire North

52. “All things are chance. Nature is chance. Life is chance. It is a human madness to cry and find rules where there are none, to invent constraints where none exist. The only thing that matters is the choice. So choose.”

— Claire North

53. “I had spent an entire life praying for a miracle, and none had come. And now I looked at the stuffy chapel of my ancestors and saw vanity and greed, heard the call to prayer and thought of power, smelled incense and wondered at the waste of it all.”

— Claire North

54. “The feeling was exhilarating at first, until the discomfort of the settling night and the damp cold eating through my boots reminded me that exhilaration held nothing over reliable hygiene and warm sheets.”

— Claire North

55. “Time, it transpires, is not so good at telling after all.”

— Claire North

56. “Speaking Mandarin with a Russian accent is extremely difficult. Of all the languages I have learned, Mandarin took me the longest, and having to replicate the suitable tones while simultaneously presenting myself as a rather bumbling Soviet scholar was an exercise that caused me considerable distress. In.”

— Claire North

57. “I do not think a pilgrimage is a proper pilgrimage if you are also using it as an excuse to visit your favourite aunt, or buy silk cheaply to re-sell,” she murmured sombrely. “That’s just business dressed up in orange robes.”

— Claire North

58. “When you are alone, even the quiet is full of monsters.”

— Claire North

59. “My dad was blown up by a tank in Poland, but he left us the car. You want a ride?”

— Claire North

60. “They say that the mind cannot remember pain; I say it barely matters, for even if the physical sensation is lost, our recollection of the terror that surrounds it is perfect.”

— Claire North

61. “It is perhaps the simplicity of his affection, the patience of his understanding and loyalty that makes him too easy to love, for his love is taken for granted by many, who give back nothing in return.”

— Claire North

62. “In a way, the nausea was worse than the pain. Pain can be drowned, but nausea eats through even the most delicious opiates and cutting chemicals.”

— Claire North

63. “The assembly dissolves at this point into furious squabbling, accusation and insult. I glance quickly into the nearby shadows, into the hot places of the earth beneath their feet, for Eris, lady of discord, wondering if she has stolen into this little assembly – but no, this is entirely, absolutely the stupidity of man without the interference of gods. It is fascinating in its detail and pettiness.”

— Claire North

64. “It was a reminder of the old truth that for tyranny to flourish all it required was the complicity of good men.”

— Claire North

65. “When I am optimistic, I choose to believe that every life I lead, every choice I make, has consequence. That I am not one Harry August but many, a mind flicking from parallel life to parallel life, and that when I die, the world carries on without me, altered by my deeds, marked by my presence.”

— Claire North

66. “Death flies because it is the modern way of things but doesn’t particularly enjoy it, except for occasionally, when he rides up front with the pilot.”

— Claire North

67. “The rituals you make, the devotions you perform, they are what binds you to yourself. If you do not have them, if you have not found them within you, you are nothing, and the desert is all. I’m.”

— Claire North

68. “You are under no compulsion to do any of this to me. It’s an entirely voluntary action on your part.” “Everybody breaks, Harry.” “I know. But you can’t afford to see how long it takes me, can you? So come on, Vincent,” I relished his English name, rolled it round my tongue. “You’d better get started.” He hesitated, just a moment, then the begging was gone. His eyes tightened.”

— Claire North

69. “I catch her as she tumbles, lest her fall be ungraceful, a messy rending of gut and bone. I ease her to the ground lightly, put her head in my lap, stroke her brow, whisper sweet sounds without form to her. My queen, greatest of all queens in Greece, stares up at the sky and does not see her brothers in it... All eyes of gods and men depart, save I.”

— Claire North

70. “Perfect people always have a solution to a problem, you see. But what do you do when words fail? Truth: sometimes a murderer cannot be found. Truth: sometimes your children are taken and you are left behind. Truth: poverty is a prison. Truth: disease and age come to us all. These are so terrifying, we program them out of the human brain.”

— Claire North

71. “I stared at Constance and wondered if, in her way, she wasn’t quite, quite mad. Not a neurological madness, not a disease of the mind, but rather a cultural madness, an infection of expectations which corrupted her perception of what should be and what actually was. Under any other circumstances I would have been praised as a genius, an unmitigated hero and quite possibly a model for social reform in stodgy times; but to Constance all these things made me a rebel.”

— Claire North

72. “There is nothing so dangerous as the need to be loved, as the desire to be seen, to be held, to be known in all your failings and loved despite them all. Nothing as heart-cracking, as soul-sheering as to love and be loved and be seen to laugh and seen to weep and known to be afraid and so away with it, let it be gone!”

— Claire North

73. “After a night of drinking, she would be a pale, starling-sized creature, but now, in this place, she is moonlight in heels.”

— Claire North

74. “His office was an attempt at wood-panelled antiquity that the building could not sustain.”

— Claire North

75. “As if a second Einstein will one day sit up in his bed and exclaim, ‘Mein Gott! Ich habe es gesehen!’ and that’s it, the universe comprehended.”

— Claire North

76. “I want to take him down, down, to the cold archives beneath the temple, to the tunnles where we keep the past, to show him selfies and pictures of food, jokes and terrible puns in dead, archaic scripts, tell him, look, look – look at people living. Look how beautiful it is to be alive.”

— Claire North

77. “Everything we hear is an opinion, not a fact.”

— Claire North

78. “And in that second, we, who have so long stood and watched, feel a shudder as her gaze sweeps the room, and know that she sees us too. She sees us, impossible though it is, and she knows. She knows who we are, and what we desire, and in that moment when we fear that she will destroy us all, instead it seems to us that she smiles.”

— Claire North

79. “We are no more and no less than minds, and it is human for the mind to be imperfect and to forget.”

— Claire North

80. “There was no moment of life, no waking from a darkness to find myself cured in that place. Rather there was slow shuffling towards comprehension, a few hours of recollection follow by a sleep, followed by a waking which stayed awake a little longer.”

— Claire North

81. “Wisdom is not always kind, truth not gentle, and neither am I.”

— Claire North

82. “Until you have not been free, you cannot understand what freedom means.”

— Claire North

83. “Forgive me,” I wrote at the bottom. “I did not think I would break.”

— Claire North

84. “When only one man can win, it is remarkable how many men will consider themselves the guaranteed winner, whispered Odysseus.”

— Claire North

85. “Dozens of lives, centuries of my life, from the first stirring of consciousness in my father’s arms to the day I die, this, Harry, this is my purpose.”

— Claire North

86. “They can respond to any situation with a two-dollar retort from a self-help book at a pinch. Is your father dead? He’s gone to a better place. Have you lost your job? Stay strong – if you believe in yourself, you’ll find a way. Husband left you, taking the kids? You can fight this one, and with the strength you have inside and the love of your children, you can win. The world is boiled down to aphorisms and fairytales. I.”

— Claire North

87. “Athena watches from the shore. Artemis prowls in the forest. And in the belly of the earth, the Furies are stirring.”

— Claire North

88. “I know it doesn’t sound very nice, Harry, but then neither does damaging yourself for the sake of others, as you will then require fixing, and others will be damaged in the attempt, and so it goes on and on and on, and frankly everyone ends up a worse mess than they were to begin with.”

— Claire North

89. “The world is boiled down to aphorisms and fairy tales.”

— Claire North

90. “Perhaps you don’t hate the British,” I mused. “Perhaps it is simply injustice.” “Of course!” she tutted, not turning her head from her examination of the road before us. “Of course it is injustice! But when injustice wears the same pasty face, you make connections, no? It is not truth. It is simply how the heart works.”

— Claire North

91. “Friendship will not stop the battle. Friendship does not unite the kingdom. Friendship is as much subject to the great sweep of politics, to the richness of the harvest and the motion of the skies, as any fluttering butterfly. Mortals create friendship to give themselves the illusion of safety and a sense of self-worth. We are gods. We should be above such trivialities.”

— Claire North

92. “The internet gave us all the power of speech, and what did we discover? That victory goes to he who shouts the loudest, and that reason does not sell.”

— Claire North

93. “Scared is how you see the spear coming for your eye. Scared is how you choose where and when to strike.”

— Claire North

94. “A man three parts moustache to one part facial features responded to “Darling!” with the dutiful twitch of one who has chosen not to fight the inevitable. “Mr August is British, would you ever have guessed?”

— Claire North

95. “They will think, perhaps, that the torment of another may in some way alleviate the pain of their hearts, and they will be wrong.”

— Claire North

96. “And certainly I know I have the capacity within me to be all of that again, to feel all of that again, and know that, while the door may be currently locked, there is a black pit in the bottom of my soul that has no limit to its falling.”

— Claire North

97. “In 1789 the French rebelled and found an emperor. The Americans found their freedom from the British and enslaved the Africans. The Arab Spring bloomed and the military and the jihadists seized power. The internet gave us all the power of speech, and what did we discover? That victory goes to he who shouts the loudest, and that reason does not sell.”

— Claire North

98. “Truth: sometimes a murderer cannot be found. Truth: sometimes your children are taken and you are left behind. Truth: poverty is a prison. Truth: disease and age come to us all.”

— Claire North

99. “Beware that child who would spill his mother’s blood. Though the gods themselves may turn away, the Furies will not.”

— Claire North

100. “The most it ever seems we know how to do with time, is to waste it.”

— Claire North