I have lived a thousand lives lost within the pages of a book.
He was swept with a sadness, a sadness deep and penetrating, leaving him desolate like someone washed up on a beach, a lone survivor in a world full of strangers.
There are moments that stop the heart, that catch the breath, that halt the beat of blood in your veins, and you are suspended in time, held between life and death, and you wait for something to bring you back again.
You could reason with someone who was halfway educated and appeal to his intelligence, but I felt helpless in the face of utter stupidity.
It doesn’t matter how big the body, it’s what you do with it.
Do I dare disturb the universe? Yes, I do, I do. I think. Jerry suddenly understood the poster – the solitary man on the beach standing upright and alone and unafraid, poised at the moment of making himself heard and known in the world, the universe.
They don’t actually want you to do your own thing, not unless it’s their thing too.
It would be nice to avoid the world, to leave it and all its threats and unhappiness. Not to die or anything like that, but to find a place of solitude and solace.
He hated to think of his own life stretching ahead of him that way, a long succession of days and nights that were fine – not good, not bad, not great, not lousy, not exciting, not anything.
Family life was wonderful. The streets were bleak. The playgrounds were bleak. But home was always warm. My mother and father had a great relationship. I always felt ‘safe’ there.
I have always had a sense that we are all pretty much alone in life, particularly in adolescence.
A writer must take risks, defy the odds, be a bit obsessed and a little mad.
That’s what Archie did – built a house nobody could anticipate a need for, except himself, a house that was invisible to everyone else.
Cities fell. Earth opened. Planets tilted. Stars plummeted. And the awful silence.
A terrific sadness swept over Jerry. As if somebody had died. The way he felt standing in the cemetry that day they buried his mother. And nothing you could do about it.
You bring up your children to be self-reliant and independent and they double-cross you and become self-reliant and independent.
Archie became absolutely still, afraid that the rapid beating of his heart might betray his sudden knowledge, the proof of what he’d always suspected, not only of Brother Leon but most grownups, most adults: they were vulnerable, running scared, open to invasion.
He was intrigued by the power of words, not the literary words that filled the books in the library but the sharp, staccato words that went into the writing of news stories. Words that went for the jugular. Active verbs that danced and raced on the page.
Don’t miss the bus, boy. You’re missing a lot of things in the world, better not miss that bus.
I’m weary of the battle. But a tired fighter can still be a fighter.