Every war is the war for whoever’s lived through it.
Is it disapproval or extreme lust? Toby wonders. With some men it’s hard to tell the difference.
He loved her so much when he made her unhappy, or else when she made him unhappy: at these moments he scarcely knew which was which.
An odd thing souvenir-hunting: now becomes then even while it is still now.
He was entitled to his own versions, his own conjurings. as I am. I may have served his ends, but he served mine as well.
I was bedazzled, as if struck by lightning.
Roz is crying again. What she’s mourning is her own good will. She tried so hard, she tried so hard to be kind and nurturing, to do the best thing. But Tony and the twins were right: no matter what you do, somebody always gets boiled.
The night before I left on the sealed bullet train, I reread my old diary, and then I knew what the Gardeners meant when they said, Be careful what you write. There were my own words from the time when I was so happy, except that now it was torture to read them. I took the diary down the street and around the corner and shoved it into a garboil dumpster. It would turn into oil and then all those red hearts I’d drawn would go up in smoke, but at least they would be useful along the way.
But what if she discovers the truth? What he suspects is the truth. That he’s patchwork, a tin man, his heart stuffed with sawdust. He thinks of her waiting for him, somewhere else, an island, subtropical, not muggy, her long hair waving in the sea breeze, a red hibiscus tucked behind one ear. If he’s lucky she’ll wait till that happens, till he can get there to be with her.
But now here they are, right in front of me. It’s like seeing unicorns. I want to hear them purr.
They understood about dreaming, he knew that: they dreamed themselves. Crake hadn’t been able to eliminate dreams. We’re hard-wired for dreams, he’d said. He couldn’t get rid of the singing either. We’re hard-wired for singing. Singing and dreams were entwined.
She prefers the more dramatic shows where everyone’s getting kidnapped or raped or shut up in a dark hole, and you aren’t supposed to laugh at it. You’re supposed to be upset, the way you’d be if it was happening to you. Being upset is a warmer, close-up feeling, not a chilly distant feeling like laughing at people.
Art was a kind of demonic possession. Art would dance you to death. It would move in and take you over, and then destroy you.
Ed, knows power corrupts, they’ll have experienced that first-hand. They’ll see how I’d be tempted to use my own power for personal reasons. They may not approve of that, but they’ll buy.
Malum quidem nullum esse sine aliquo bono, Tin noted in the journal he was sporadically keeping then. Every cloud has a silver lining.
What would that be like – to long, to yearn for someone who is right there before your eyes, day in and day out?
What were prizes but one more level of control imposed on Art by the establishment?
The older women, the married ones and the widows, wear black clothes and no makeup, as I used to do. When I was in the later months of pregnancy, they would smile at me, as if I was almost one of them. Now they smile at Sarah first.
Does she ever see him watching her through the picture window? Most likely. Does she think he’s a lecherous old man? Very probably. But he isn’t exactly that. How to convey the mix of longing, wistfulness, and muted regret that he feels? His regret is that he isn’t a lecherous old man, but he wishes he were. He wishes he still could be.
Everyone’s too sad for everything.