It takes all sorts to make a world.
They looked at each other in absolute horror, as if they knew that they couldn’t possibly control the chain of events set in place by that simple, inevitable meeting. The lives they had lived until that moment had come to an end. And then it didn’t matter what happened next, their destinies were already decided.
You have it.” she said. “And for what little it is worth, I hope that it brings you peace.
Honestly, Ignac, I look back at my life and I don’t understand very much of it. It seems like it would have been so simple now to have been honest with everyone, especially Julian.
The night was warmer than most I had known; we could breathe without seeing clouds of unpoken words dissolving into the atmosphere before us.
Social media gives legions of idiots the right to speak when they once only spoke at a bar after a glass of wine, without harming the community. Then they were quickly silenced, but now they have the same right to speak as a Nobel Prize winner. It’s the invasion of the idiots.’ UMBERTO ECO.
What I would not have given to be that young at this time and to be able to experience such unashamed honesty.
Why couldn’t Ireland have been like this when I was a boy?
An old man should not resent those who are sent to take his place, and to recall when I was young and healthy and virile is an act of masochism that serves no purpose.
Naturally, I have grown to recognize some of my fellow visitors, the widows and widowers in waiting who wander the corridors in terrified loneliness, deprived for the first time in decades of their favourite person.
My great fear when Caden was born was that he would remind me of my brother.
And, you’ll forgive me for sounding immodest, but i know that i’m good-looking. Throughout my life, both men and women have made their interest in me obvious. But I can’t control any of that. It was simply the way I was born. Ultimately, it means nothing. I could have a heart of stone for all they know. I could be a psychopath or a sociopath. Not all monsters look like the Elephant Man, and not everyone who looks like the Elephant Man is a monster.
A chest out to here and legs that go all the way down to the floor.
I’d rather bore a hole to the center of the earth with my tongue.
On the day that Max showed up, I hadn’t spoken to a single person in eight days. I’d kept note of it in a diary. I hadn’t raised my hand in class, hadn’t said a word to anyone in school, had eaten my meals in perfect silence, which was how Maude preferred it anyway, and generally hid away in my bedroom, wondering what was wrong with me, for even at that tender age I know that there was something about me that was different and that would be impossible ever to put right.
What are you playing?” I asked him. “War.” “Is that a game?” “It’s the best game in the world.” “And are you winning?” “I won’t know till it’s over.” “And perhaps not even then.
You don’t want to be labelled with a conventional pronoun that has been in common usage since the English tongue was first established,’ continued Beverley. ‘And so, instead, you’d like to be labelled with an equally conventional pronoun that has been in common usage since the English tongue was first established. Simply the pluralized version. That’s it, isn’t it?
You were cruel.’ ‘I was obedient.
It starts in the schoolyard, with small boys fighting among each other. In the 1930s, the Reich found a people to hate. Now, twenty years later, it’s us who are hunted down. When they discover one of us, they bring us to a courtroom so the world can hear of our crimes but, really, all they want is to shoot us, hang us, kill us in any way they can. We’re all just trying to survive.
I sometimes feel as if I wasn’t supposed to live among people at all. As if I would be happier on a little island somewhere, all alone with my books and some writing material for company. I could grow my own food and never have to speak to a soul.