Kate Tempest Quotes & Sayings

If you've been an arsehole today, acknowledge it.
Try not to be one tomorrow. — Kate Tempest

True love takes its toll
On souls
Who are not used to feeling whole — Kate Tempest

You give too much, they take too much, they want too much, or not enough, and suddenly you find yourselves emptied out and open-handed, grabbing for some more. She — Kate Tempest

It's on us, the people at the bottom to fix things for ourselves even though it's us who suffer the decisions of the people at the top the most — Kate Tempest

Becky tilts her chin upwards, watches the cold sun bouncing off the windows in the tops of the buildings, dripping its yolk across pale stone and glass. — Kate Tempest

But on dark days he likes to walk
Beside the heartsick sea.
And as the waves begin to howl
He drops down to his knees,
And cries for all he's lost
And for all he used to be. — Kate Tempest

How to follow orders when you're bordering on nausea and you're bored and insecure and dwarfed by fear. — Kate Tempest

The world is a terrible place for sensitive people but the closer we come to losing our minds, the harder we'll work to keep them. — Kate Tempest

What happened to us? We go parties now, and we've nothing to say to each other 'til we're fucked. And even then. We spend hours talking about parties from before, things that happened to us once, we spend life retelling life and it's pointless and boring. — Kate Tempest

Youth hates age, age loves youth. — Kate Tempest

Millions of characters, each with their own epic narratives singing it's hard to be an angel until you've been a demon. — Kate Tempest

Better to have been a dickhead and seen it,
than be a cunt all your life and not know it. — Kate Tempest

He won't walk the woods alone:
He'll only walk the heath.
He blanks out all the lives he's known,
But they survive beneath. — Kate Tempest

Silence approaches the table like an overeager waiter. Hovers around making everyone feel looked at. — Kate Tempest

Taking things for granted is a terrible disease. We should all be checking ourselves regularly for signs of it. — Kate Tempest

How many yous have you been?
How many,
Lined up inside,
Each killing the last? — Kate Tempest

Youth hates age, age loves youth. This means we are born for unhappiness. This means we will keep buying outfits. — Kate Tempest

She flicks her words like lit matches. They drop delicately, burning. — Kate Tempest

Like you got two lives. And which one's real? Which one's actually the life your living? — Kate Tempest

She is dark browed, sarcastic and occasionally mean spirited. A knife amongst all this flesh, The kind of woman who starts chaos in strangers all day. — Kate Tempest

- "Who the fuck is this Harry charakter?" "Superwoman, by all accounts. — Kate Tempest

His hair was black as onyx and his smile wrapped itself around anyone who saw it. — Kate Tempest

Foul smell of the things that we do to escape
There is no glamour in this. No rock and roll.
This is just endings. This is just grief. — Kate Tempest

Look again and you will see the Gods rise in the most human and unassuming of eyes. — Kate Tempest

there's always been heroes,
there's always been villains,
the stakes may have changed
but really there's no difference.

there's always been greed
and heartbreak and ambition.
jealousy, love,
trespass and contrition,

we're the same beings that began,
still living,
in all of our fury and foulness and friction.
Everyday odysseys.
Dreams vs decisions.
The stories are there if you listen. — Kate Tempest

Everything is killing him and yet his life just keeps on dragging; the morning comes and here he is, awake again. Alive. — Kate Tempest

They were as close and as distant as any family. — Kate Tempest

Sun of himself. All things are his moons. — Kate Tempest

It gets to painful. You give too much, they take too much, or not enough, and suddenly you find yourself emptied out and open handed, grabbing for some more. — Kate Tempest

We die so others can be born
We age so others can be young
The point of life is live,
Love if you can
Then pass it on. — Kate Tempest

He stretches his legs out underneath the table and checks Facebook on his phone. It tells him things he doesn't need to know about people he hasn't seen in years. He absorbs their aggressively worded opinions and quasi-political hate-speak. He sees a photograph of his ex-girlfriend with her new boyfriend smiling at a picnic and he realises, with a strange cascade of emptiness, that she is pregnant and wearing an engagement ring. The comments are jubilant. He reads every word before he forces himself to put his phone down. A loneliness descends. He feels its familiar talons grabbing him violently out of his chair and hanging him, swinging, up by the ceiling. Pete — Kate Tempest

Winter laid her solemn hands across the city and stroked all the colours out of the sky — Kate Tempest

Life could be hideous or beautiful, often both, but never mediocre — Kate Tempest

There's no way back,
There is no track
That leads to his past lives.
He sets himself on forwards.
And he loves.
And he survives. — Kate Tempest

And the days are all dust
and the only thing worse
than losing the trust
of a lover is finding the rust
in their kiss. — Kate Tempest

Everybody's looking for their tiny piece of meaning. Some fleeting, perfect thing that might make them more alive. — Kate Tempest

The wind was still making an orchestra out of the tent. But it wasn't a requiem anymore. — Kate Tempest

One man's flash of lightning, ripping through the air, is another's passing glare. Hardly there. — Kate Tempest

Eventually, Leon's voice limps from his chest and staggers out of his mouth. — Kate Tempest

Why is this interesting? Why are we watching? — Kate Tempest

It's big business baby and its smile is hideous.
Top down violence, structural viciousness.
Your kids are doped up on medical sedatives.
But don't worry bout that. Worry bout terrorists.

The water levels rising! The water levels rising!
The animals, the polarbears, the elephants are dying!
Stop crying. Start buying.
But what about the oil spill?
Shh. No one likes a party pooping spoil sport.

Massacres massacres massacres/new shoes
Ghettoised children murdered in broad daylight by those employed to protect them.
Live porn streamed to your pre-teens bedrooms.
Glass ceiling, no headroom. Half a generation live beneath the breadline. — Kate Tempest

Hard rain falling,
on all the half-hearted
half-formed
fast walking
Half-fury, half-boredom.
Hard talking.
Half dead from exhaustion.
Hard pushed,
but the puddles keep forming

Don't fall in. — Kate Tempest