Top 120 Sarah Winman Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “Memories no matter how small or inconsequential are the pages that define us.”

— Sarah Winman

2. “No atheists at sea, Drake. When the waves are the size of mountains even the godless kneel.”

— Sarah Winman

3. “You’re a Doer, my love. That’s why God made you so big. So you could do everything yourself. Girls like you don’t quit til you’re dead. That should be a comfort.”

— Sarah Winman

4. “Nothing stays forgotten for long, Elly. Sometimes we simply have to remind the world that we’re special and that we’re still here.”

— Sarah Winman

5. “You can hold onto anything to make you carry on.”

— Sarah Winman

6. “The lady poet laughed, She is smitten already! You have caught the fever of Firenze! Oh, my dear Miss Skinner, there is no turning back. You shall die with those lights in your eyes. Miss Skinner has turned looking into loving! The first rule of art. Looking into loving! Oh welcome, my dear! Welcome.”

— Sarah Winman

7. “Coming back from the dead is not quite the same as coming back to life.”

— Sarah Winman

8. “I haven’t cried. But sometimes I feel as if my veins are leaking, as if my body is overwhelmed, as if I’m drowning from the inside.”

— Sarah Winman

9. “She was always like that: grateful for life itself. Her glass was not only half full, it was gold plated with a permanent refill.”

— Sarah Winman

10. “Without reason, why bother? Existence needs purpose: to be able to endure the pain of life with dignity; to give us a reason to continue. The meaning must enter our hearts, not our heads. We must understand the meaning of our suffering.”

— Sarah Winman

11. “And I wonder what the sound of a heart breaking might be. And I think it might be quiet, unperceptively so, and not dramatic at all. Like the sound of an exhausted swallow falling gently to earth.”

— Sarah Winman

12. “The principles of catching rumours were, in fact, similar to the principals of catching dreams, but because rumour was weightier, the catcher had to be positioned closer to the ground. Rumour flew low, dreams flew high, and somewhere in between were prayers.”

— Sarah Winman

13. “The witness of my soul, my shadow in childhood, when dreams were small and attainable for all. When sweets were a penny and god was a rabbit.”

— Sarah Winman

14. “The scale of man – spatially – is about midway between the atom and the star.”

— Sarah Winman

15. “I struggle between my tears, and can do little else but make for the side. I rest till I’m calm and my breathing has settled. I lift myself out and sit by the edge of the pool with a towel around my shoulders. And I wonder what the sound of a heart breaking might be. And I think it might be quiet, unperceptively so, and not dramatic at all. Like the sound of an exhausted swallow falling gently to earth.”

— Sarah Winman

16. “There’s something about first love, isn’t there? she said. It’s untouchable to those who played no part in it. But it’s the measure of all that follows.”

— Sarah Winman

17. “Two people pulling each other into Salvation is the only theme I find worthwhile. – E. M. Forster, Commonplace Book.”

— Sarah Winman

18. “There was no point in tears outliving eyes, so she let them fall.”

— Sarah Winman

19. “I said to him that just because you can’t remember, doesn’t mean the past isn’t out there. All those precious moments are still there somewhere.”

— Sarah Winman

20. “Autumn knocks on the window. I pull back the sliding doors and let it in. Lights from the meat market flicker and car lights streak the gloom. Overhead the pulse of aeroplane wings replaces the stars. The flat is quiet. This is loneliness.”

— Sarah Winman

21. “There are moments in life, so monumental and still, that the memory can never be retrieved without a catch to the throat or an interruption to the beat of the heart. Can never be retrieved without the rumbling disquiet of how close that moment came to not having happened at all.”

— Sarah Winman

22. “And I remember thinking, how cruel it was that our plans were out there somewhere. Another version of our future, out there somewhere, in perpetual orbit.”

— Sarah Winman

23. “It was as if a blade had shucked his heart like an oyster and stolen the beauty within. He said his heart never started beating again, it just started working and I never understood the difference, not until I was much older anyway, when I learnt that coming back from the dead is not quite the same as coming back to life.”

— Sarah Winman

24. “Men and boys should be capable of beautiful things.”

— Sarah Winman

25. “I’m broken by my need for others. By the erotic dance of memory that pounces when loneliness falls.”

— Sarah Winman

26. “Everything was real, not perfect. And yet that’s what had made it so perfect.”

— Sarah Winman

27. “You had to translate his actions, for they were seldom accompanied by words, because his world was a quiet world; a disconnected, factured space; a puzzle that made him phone me at 3am, asking me for the last piece of the border, so he could fill in the sky.”

— Sarah Winman

28. “He started to do that, started to inform me of everything; the inconsequential, the meaningful; conversations that ended in a cul-de-sac of unanswerable rhetoric. i think it was because I knew everything about him, had read it all – the beautiful, the sordid, the all of his book. I had been his editor for 5 years, and now it seemed, had become his editor away from the printed page.”

— Sarah Winman

29. “She would suddenly stop in front of that painting, and whatever she was saying or doing at that precise moment came to an abrupt halt in the presence of the colour yellow. It was her solace. Her inspiration and confessional.”

— Sarah Winman

30. “I try hard to be liked, I always have. I try hard to lessen people’s pain. I try hard because I can’t face my own.”

— Sarah Winman

31. “It was still a world of shyness and fear, and those shared moments were everything: my loneliness masquerading as sexual desire. But it was my humanness that led me to seek, that’s all. Led us all to seek. A simple need to belong somewhere.”

— Sarah Winman

32. “But it was my humanness that led me to seek, that’s all. Led us all to seek. A simple need to belong somewhere.”

— Sarah Winman

33. “Love just enough. What’s enough? Enough to hold. When it hurts, you’re loving too much. Just enough to hold. Anything more than a handful and you’re in trouble.”

— Sarah Winman

34. “And he uncovered in us a curious need: that we each secretly wanted him to remember us the most. It was strange, both vital and flawed, until I realised that maybe the need to be remembered is stronger than the need to remember.”

— Sarah Winman

35. “And they held on tight to that beautiful silent moment before words transported them to the realm of the ordinary, to the realm of the inarticulate and mundane.”

— Sarah Winman

36. “Think about it, I said. We all had to come out of the dark to sing.”

— Sarah Winman

37. “I realized that maybe the need to be remembered is stronger than the need to remember.”

— Sarah Winman

38. “We were solitary and apart. Slept during the day, uncurled at dusk like evening primroses; fragrant and lush. We never wanted to conquer the world, only our fears. We didn’t keep in touch. Somewhere, though, our memories had.”

— Sarah Winman

39. “Love. It’s the only thing to have faith in... Or the moon. Soemthing that turns up every day when you cant. The sun. The moon. Anything. You have to have faith in something.”

— Sarah Winman

40. “Emotions embarassed her except when she sang. My dad said that was exactly why she sang.”

— Sarah Winman

41. “She was of another world; different. But by then, secretly, so was I.”

— Sarah Winman

42. “We were the centre of that liquid universe, for we were the night sun and we said to ships, do not come too close, we have rocks at our feet. And the crash of waves sent white spray flying, and I am scared and exhilarated and a little bit in love too.”

— Sarah Winman

43. “If we can accept the laws of the universe, the ebb and flow of joy and tragedy, then we have everything we need to embrace our true freedom.”

— Sarah Winman

44. “We love who we love, don’t we?”

— Sarah Winman

45. “And Michael reached for Dora’s hand and they laughed and Ellis remembered how grateful he was that Michael’s care was instinctive and natural because he could never be that way with her. He was constantly on the lookout for the last good-bye.”

— Sarah Winman

46. “Popularity, my dear, is as overrated as a large member.”

— Sarah Winman

47. “But when she had entered the gallery room, the storm shutters around her heart flew open and she knew immediately that this was the life she wanted: Freedom. Possibility. Beauty.”

— Sarah Winman

48. “I looked young then and my young was audacious. I lay back in those tiny dusty rooms and let the summer dusk unbutton me.”

— Sarah Winman

49. “He remembered how Michael had bragged that he could swim, but he couldn’t. He said that he’d read everything about swimming, firmly believing he could trip across words, like stepping stones, to the bank of experience. But he couldn’t.”

— Sarah Winman

50. “It would be as if the sun itself rose every morning on that wall, showering the silence of their mealtimes with the shifting emotion of light.”

— Sarah Winman