Ferdia Lennon > Quotes

“The hearts of men are alike wherever you go. The rest is scenery.”
― Ferdia Lennon, Glorious Exploits

“You don’t rob a man of his suffering,’ says Gelon quietly. ‘That’s his.”
― Ferdia Lennon, Glorious Exploits

“There's more to Athens than tragedy,' says Paches with feeling. 'We laugh till we cry, and we drink.' Another swig. 'We drink till we fall down, but we're up first thing in the morning to scheme and love and build and do it all again. It's a city of belief, not despair.”
― Ferdia Lennon, Glorious Exploits

“But still, a tragedy without a tune is like a sun that doesn’t give off heat; dead and nothing will grow from it. When men go to war, they do it to music. When they set sails for better shores and row into the vast blue, they do it to music. Even our hearts beat to some rhythm. And the director who neglects it neglects what makes us men.”
― Ferdia Lennon, Glorious Exploits

“I play, though of course you couldn't really call what I'm doing playing, but it clashes with the scurrying of rats, their awful screeching, and in my mind, those rats aren't just rats, they're everything in the world that's broken. They're the things falling apart, and the part of you that wants them to. They're the Athenians burning Hyccara and the Syracusans chucking those Athenians into the quarry. They're the invisible disease that ate away at the insides of little Helios till he couldn't walk or, in the end, even speak, just cry with pain. Those rats are the worst of everything under an indifferent sky, but the sound coming from the aulos, frail as it might be in comparison, well, that's us, I say to myself, that's us giving it a go, it's us building shit, and singing songs, and cooking food, it's kisses, and stories told over a winter fire, it's decency, and all we'll ever have to give, I say to myself, as my lungs burn and my eyes water, 'cause I don't have much left, but I keep blowing away at the aulos, playing my song...”
― Ferdia Lennon

“It's poetry we're doing,' he whispers. 'It wouldn't mean a thing if it were easy.”
― Ferdia Lennon, Glorious Exploits

“There's more to Athens than tra- gedy,' says Paches with feeling. 'We laugh till we cry, and we drink.' Another swig. 'We drink till we fall down, but we're up first thing in the morning to scheme and love and build and do it all again. It's a city of belief, not despair. That proverb has nothing to do with the Athens I knew.”
― Ferdia Lennon, Glorious Exploits

“Since his son’s death, Biton has become a devotee of Dionysus, but being skint, he gets to worship rarely.”
― Ferdia Lennon, Glorious Exploits

“Fuck Sophocles!”
― Ferdia Lennon, Glorious Exploits

“I never believed. I needed to, which isn't the same.”
― Ferdia Lennon, Glorious Exploits

“Your friend professes belief yet I’m not convinced. What about you? Are the gods real?”
“They are real,” says I, “And you’re a prick.”



“But still, a tragedy without a tune is like a sun that doesn’t give off heat; dead and nothing will grow from it. When men go to war, they do it to music. When they set sails for better shores and row into the vast blue, they do it to music. Even our hearts beat to some rhythm. And the director who neglects it neglects what makes us men.”
― Ferdia Lennon, Glorious Exploits

“The leaves don’t so much fall as rip from the trees. All of them are red, and they skitter along the roads like bleeding stars under that knife of moon.”
― Ferdia Lennon, Glorious Exploits

“Your friend professes belief yet I’m not convinced. What about you? Are the gods real?”
“They are real,” says I, “And you’re a prick.”
― Ferdia Lennon, Glorious Exploits

“Hunger, what an odd thing it is. Is the source of all love a lacking? Is that what creates emotion? Not a presence but an absence. Do you need to be emptied to be filled?”
― Ferdia Lennon, Glorious Exploits

“His master was ever in love with misfortune and believed the world a wounded thing that could only be healed by story.”
― Ferdia Lennon, Glorious Exploits

“have the feeling that the future and the past aren’t separate at all, just different snatches of a single song, always sung, given consequence when heard.”
― Ferdia Lennon, Glorious Exploits

“but to marry the moon and be served by stars.”
― Ferdia Lennon, Glorious Exploits

“Anything is possible, and it always has been. For the world was once just a dream in a god's eye, and the man who gives up on himself makes that very same god look away.”
― Ferdia Lennon, Glorious Exploits

“A tragedy without a tune is like a sun that doesn’t give off heat: dead, and nothing will grow from it. When men go to war, they do it to music. When they set sail for better shores and row into the vast blue, they do it to music. Even our hearts beat to some rhythm, and the director who neglects it neglects what makes us men.”
― Ferdia Lennon, Glorious Exploits

“The assembly was aching with the need to cut that deal, save the city, and then, whether the gods fancied a change or it was just our time, the Athenians started to lose. Small skirmishes at first, of no real consequence, but each loss, each near miss took a little bit of their faith away, unspooled a thread of soul, so that when the real battles came, the ones that would decide it all, they no longer believed and you could taste their doubt in the air, like fetid rain on the wind, and the only deal we were interested in was hawking their possessions after total and utter surrender.”
― Ferdia Lennon, Glorious Exploits