Tom says to Richard: You asked what I missed about the job. And that’s it. But his tone had changed. The vanished fame, the lost acclaim, the old success.
You can never do enough for the dead. You search around for comfort but there is no comfort; there never was and never will be. There is only a gradual wearing away of the sharp edges, so that you don’t feel ambushed at every turn, as if you saw the dead suddenly rounding the corner.
Writing is an antisocial act.
You can’t be blocked if you just keep on writing words. Any words. People who get ‘blocked’ make the mistake of thinking they have to write good words.
Intricately plotted, beautifully paced, The Music of the Spheres is an elegant historical novel rich in detail, at times Dickensian in its description of London. Elizabeth Redfern has made an exciting debut.
Talking’s just a nervous habit.
I cleared my throat – it isn’t frogs you get in your throat; it’s memories.
Most people see what they want to, or at least what they expect to.
The English inn stands permanently planted at the confluence of the roads of history, memory, and romance.
Arnold was a dog’s dog. Whenever he shuffled along walks and through alleyways, he always gave the impression of being on to something big.
And so it continued all day, wynde after wynde, From a room beyond came the whistle of a teakettle. Now, you really must join me. I’ve some marvelous Darjeeling, and some delicious petit fours a friend of mine gave me for Christmas.
An idyllic childhood is probably illusion.
Old willows trailed veils of wet leaves across his path. Moss crawled up the headstones. The place was otherwise deserted.
Macalvie, that was an incredibly lachrymose question.
Melrose, smiling brightly at the butcher.
Perhaps he was fit for the life of a hermit. Give up all of his worldly possessions and go live in a hut on a shelf of rock and watch the sunrise every morning. Up before the sun! What a dreadful idea; he shuddered.
He suspected, given her editorial experience, that she was in her fifties, but she had been coiffed, massaged, starved, and sunlamped down to forty.
Before Ernest could start walking back the cat, Melrose put in, “But isn’t it rather we who have come here, Mrs. Attaboy?” At her uncomprehending look, he plowed on. “It is their country.” “What? Africa?” “If Africa were a country, the answer would be yes.
They’re an idea of home, I think. Words are. It really is like opening a door, isn’t it, to open a book. If that’s not too sentimental to say. Books, words, stories are a kind of solace.
I read somewhere that we never completely forget a thing, that there are the imprints of everything we’ve ever seen or done, all of these tiny details at the bottoms of our minds, like pebbles and weeds that never surface from a river bottom.