One Word Kill (Impossible Times, #1)

by Mark Lawrence

In general, I found other people to be a far greater mystery than, say, integral calculus, which my friends at school assured me was supposed to be difficult. I take pride in that ‘s’. Friends. I had two. Three, if you broadened the search beyond the school gates and counted Elton. Which I did. Four, if you counted the girl. Which, rather stupidly, I didn’t.

If you ignore the words, there’s an honesty in the emotion that fleets across faces in conversation.

He died when I was twelve. He also had cancer, but an oncoming train cured him.

If I was going to be eaten alive, and I in no way wished to be, let it be by a crab rather than a spider.

It made me less willing to trust him. Laughter should be unguarded even if nothing else is.

It’s always a shock, when you’ve been hit by some calamity, to see the world go about its business with perfect indifference.

It doesn’t matter what the doctors say, there’s no fatal disease that doesn’t feel contagious to the person sitting next to you.

While that was an education we were all sorely in need of, in truth only John stood a chance of securing a girlfriend, unless studiously ignoring a girl and awkward silences really were the key to the art of seduction.

They see boxers, big muscles, long arms, huge guys, and think that’s what matters on the streets. What really matters in real life, though, is how far you’re prepared to go and how quickly.

Money, charm, and looks. Two out of three might be forgivable, but the whole set is bound to breed a little resentment.

If I was going to die young, I wanted to at least squeeze the juice out of life rather than pick at it. But you can’t change who you are. Not even with a gun to your head.

Mother stayed where she was, her smile fixed in that way we Brits use to show we wholly disapprove of something.

She waved to Mother, still parked across the road, signalling in some universal mothering code that I was in good hands.

‘Of all the worlds, in all the universes, he walks into mine.’

If you’re scared of spiders, then ‘it’s a thousandth of your size’ and ‘they don’t bite’ are not going to make you pick one of the bastards up.

I guess home exerts a pretty strong pull in times of trouble, even if it’s the first place trouble will come looking for you.

They say it’s good to share, but in the end, whatever anyone says, we face the real shit alone.

we all dance around each other in a kind of terror, too petrified of stepping on each other’s toes to understand that we are at least for a brief time getting to dance and should be enjoying the hell out of it.

I suspect most teenage boys could win the hundred metres in an attempt to outdistance parental embarrassment.

Mia was part of our group now. And those ties run deep. You don’t abandon a party member. Even if it means going to a party.

I could have but I didn’t. It was too close to begging and something in me wouldn’t allow it.

We might live in a multiverse of infinite wonder, but we are what we are, and can only care about what falls into our own orbit.

I made no protest. If you’ve no intention of obeying, then why not agree.

‘People say I don’t know where to stop. I say, if you never stop, they’ll never catch you.’