Revolution? Really, Ono! The communists want a revolution. We want nothing of the sort. Quite the opposite, in fact. We wish for a restoration.
Not that anything significant started to happen immediately afterwards; but for me at least, that conversation was a turning point. I definitely started to look at everything differently. Where before I’d have backed away from awkward stuff, I began instead, more and more, to ask questions, if not out loud, at least within myself.
I think genre rules should be porous, if not nonexistent.
And one has a right, perhaps, to feel a satisfaction those content to serve mediocre employers will never know – the satisfaction of being able to say with some reason that one’s efforts, in however modest a way, comprise a contribution to the course of history.
We may pray to different gods, yet surely yours will bless this dragon as does mine.” Wistan.
Sisters are supposed to be people you’re close to, aren’t they. You may not like them much, but you’re still close to them.
Because whatever the song was really about, in my head, when I was dancing, I had my own version. You see, I imagined it was about this woman who’d been told she couldn’t have babies. But then she’d had one, and she was so pleased, and she was holding it ever so tightly to her breast, really afraid something might separate them, and she’s going baby, baby, never let me go.
Leave us, you were always on the outside of our love.
But such monsters were not cause for astonishment. People then would have regarded them as everyday hazards, and in those days there was so much else to worry about. How to get food out of the hard ground; how not to run out of firewood; how to stop the sickness that could kill a dozen pigs in a single day and produce green rashes on the cheeks of children.
I thought sooner or later someone would start saying it had gone too far, but it just kept on, and no one said anything. I.
A lot of the time, how you were regarded at Hailsham, how much you were liked and respected, had to do with how good you were at “creating.” Ruth.
Chess is all about maintaining coherent strategies. It’s about not giving up when the enemy destroys one plan but to immediately come up with the next. A game isn’t won and lost at the point when the king is finally cornered. The game’s sealed when a player gives up having any strategy at all. When his soldiers are all scattered, they have no common cause, and they move one piece at a time, that’s when you’ve lost.
Our life together’s like a tale with a happy end, no matter what turns it took in the way.
For however one may come in later years to reassess one’s achievements, it is always a consolation to know that one’s life has contained a moment or two or real satisfaction.
Resolved not to waste further time on account of this childish affair, I contemplated departure via the french windows.
The pond lay to the south of the house. To get there you went out the back entrance, and down the narrow twisting path, pushing past the overgrown bracken that, in the early autumn, would still be blocking your way. Or if there were no guardians around, you could take a short cut through the rhubarb patch. Anyway, once you came out to the pond, you’d find a tranquil atmosphere waiting, with ducks and bulrushes and pond-weed.
I for one will never doubt that a desire to see ‘justice in this world’ lay at the heart of all his actions.
Might as well tell you. In that shop we were in, they had this shelf with loads of records and tapes. So I was looking for the one you lost that time. Do you remember, Kath? I never told you at the time, but I tried really hard to find it. I remember looking for ages. And when it looked in the end like it wasn’t going to turn up, I just said to myself, one day I’ll go to Norfolk and I’ll find it there for her.
If we’d understood that back then-who knows?-maybe we’d have kept a tighter hold of one another.
In any case, there is surely no great shame in mistakes made in the best of faith. It is surely a thing far more shameful go be unable or unwilling to acknowledge them.