Pat Barker quotes

It's the hardest thing in the world to go on being aware of someone else's pain. (Pat Barker)
Culturally, the First World War is the war that stands in for other wars. View quote
Pat Barker
Another person's life, observed from the outside, always has a shape and definition that one's own life lacks. View quote
Pat Barker
Fiction should be about moral dilemmas that are so bloody difficult that the author doesn't know the answer. View quote
Pat Barker
Being a writer is a poverty trap. I mean, it's a terrible profession. View quote
Pat Barker
'Undertones of War' by Edmund Blunden seems to get less attention than the memoirs of Siegfried Sassoon and Robert Graves, but it is a great book. View quote
Pat Barker
That balance between involvement and detachment is what novelists do. It's the ideal relationship between a novelist and a character, I think, total involvement and identity and empathy, stopping short of being autobiographical - in my case, anyway - but also quite detached. View quote
Pat Barker