More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
The hallway stretches like a band of taffy,
“It’s using a thing that’s not true to talk about things that are.” “If something’s not true, it’s a lie.” “Not always.” He doesn’t have the vocabulary to explain why this is so: he just knows it is, that sometimes things are symbols for ideas bigger than they could ever be without help, that sometimes untruths are the truest thing of all.
Roger thinks that’s the trouble with grownups. The more effort they put into deciding what kids are going to do or think or be, the more things go wrong for them.)
She keeps her secrets close to her chest. That’s how she survives in a world where she’s so much smarter than she should be, and so much more delicate than she seems.
Words almost never end that way. Words can be whispered bullet-quick when no one’s looking, and words don’t leave blood or bruises behind. Words disappear without a trace. That’s what makes them so powerful. That’s what makes them so important. That’s what makes them hurt so much.
He’s learnt so many new concepts, and the words to pin them to the surface of his soul, perpetual and immutable. Without words, some things would slip away, impossible to describe and hence impossible to hold.
The mind is an imperfect engine, and it does what it will with the information it receives.
It won’t last, of course. But neither of them knows that consciously, and even if they did, it wouldn’t change the moment, the comfort it contains, or the fixed point it represents on the tangled structure of their lives. This is one of the moments around which all else will rotate, even when the world starts falling down. This is one of the moments that will shine.
It will be much, much later before he realizes that this was the moment when he decided which part he was going to play. By then, it will be a thousand miles too late.
terror and hope are uncomfortable bedfellows, and when they lie down together, frivolities like lies tend to fade away.
some rules cut all the way down to the bones of the earth.
There are pieces missing, sure, and not just in the living room floor, but whose life doesn’t have a few missing pieces? Missing pieces are what makes it real, rather than just a painting of a life that could never actually exist. Missing pieces are essential.
Their past is littered with the unburied bodies of the people they chose never to become.
