When he closed his eyes, everything around him just felt empty and cold, as if he was in the loneliest place in the world. The middle of nowhere.
I didn’t blow anyone!’ he roared. ‘If anyone was getting blown it was me. Although, of course, it wasn’t me anyway, as it never happened.’ ‘That’s a great quote,’ said Mr Denby-Denby. ‘We should definitely put that into the press release. I don’t blow teenage boys. They blow me.
Bruno had a pain in his stomach and he could feel something growing inside him, something that when it worked its way up from the lowest depths inside him to the outside world would either make him shout and scream that the whole thing was wrong and unfair and a big mistake for which somebody would pay one of these days, or just make him burst into tears instead.
The sensation that for the world to exist with an object of such beauty in it – and for that object to be unattainable – was the very sweetest kind of pain imaginable.
Please don’t embarrass yourself by offering an opinion.
I had told the truth, or a version of it, anyway.
Collars, trench coats or jackboots – uniforms allow us to exercise our cruelty without ever feeling guilt.
Anything is possible,’ I said. ‘But most things are unlikely.
Please don’t let Julian die, I asked God. And please stop me from being a homosexual. Only when I stood up and walked away did I realize that that had been two prayers, so I went back and lit a second candle, which cost me another penny.
When you sit down with a book, you are separating yourself out of your world for a few hours and getting lost in the story.
You have many years ahead of you to come to terms with your complicity in these matters. Just don’t ever tell yourself that you didn’t know.” She released him now from her grip. “That would be the worst crime of all.
I don’t drink coffee,” she said, taking a sip from her tea. “Coffee is for Americans and Protestants. Irish people should drink tea. That’s how we were brought up after all. Give me a nice cup of Lyons and I’m content.” “I don’t mind the occasional cup of Barry’s myself.” “No, that’s from Cork.
Situations like that always made Bruno feel very uncomfortable because, in his heart, he knew that there was no reason to be impolite to someone, even if they did work for you. There was such a thing as manners after all.
Is it really that easy for the innocent to be corrupted?
Sure the priests ran the country back then and they hated women. Oh my God, they hated women and anything that had to do with women and anything to do with women’s bodies or ideas or desires, and any chance that they had to humiliate a woman or bring her down, they would take full advantage of it.
And I am not one of these long-living fictional characters who prays for death as a release from the captivity of eternal life; not for me the endless whining and wailing of the undead.
The more you read, the more you write, the more the ideas will appear. They’ll fall like confetti around your head and your only difficulty will be deciding which ones to catch and which to let fall to the floor.
There’s nothing more tedious than a grown man blaming his parents, birth or otherwise, for all the things that have gone wrong in his life.
I never really noticed it any more, in the way that one often ignores familiar things, like seat cushions or loved ones.
However, as the consequences of Black Thursday began to settle in investors’ minds, most people attempted to recover their losses and the dramatic selling began again. On Tuesday 29 October, the day of the Wall Street Crash, more than 16 million shares were dumped in an afternoon of trading. On that one single day, as much money was lost on the New York stock exchange as had been spent in its entirety by the US government on fighting the First World War. It was a disaster. Annette.