A Ladder to the Sky

by John Boyne

‘No,’ I insisted. ‘Everyone has secrets. There’s something in all our pasts that we wouldn’t want to be revealed. Look around the foyer the next time you’re there and ask yourself, What would each of these people prefer that I didn’t know about them? And that’s where you’ll find your story. A hotel can be a fascinating place. Hundreds of people gathered together in one building, yet each one desperate to maintain their privacy.’

Perhaps it would be a good idea if everyone just stopped writing for a couple of years and allowed readers to catch up.

Writers are all fascists. We like to control the discourse and crush anyone who dares to disagree with us.’

Why on earth she brought grapes is a mystery to me. I wanted to scream, I’m in a coma, you stupid fucking bitch, and I did scream it, in my head, anyway.

One declared that he had originally considered The Tribesman to be a masterpiece, but now that he knew it had actually been written by a woman, he was revising that opinion and realized that it was just a tedious piece of domestic trivia, driven by sentimentality.