Black Swan Green

by David Mitchell

That stuff about shaking your dong’s a craze at the moment. There’s no one I can trust to ask what it means.

(My abortion of a sister flashed me a victorious grin.)

Dead things show you what you’ll be too one day.

(Eavesdropping’s sort of thrilling ’cause you learn what people really think, but eavesdropping makes you miserable for exactly the same reason.)

I looked through it at the sun for secret colors nobody’s ever named.

Green is made of yellow and blue, nothing else, but when you look at green, where’ve the yellow and the blue gone? Somehow this is to do with Moran’s dad. Somehow this is to do with everyone and everything. But too many things’d’ve gone wrong if I’d tried to say this to Moran.

Blackbirds sang like they’d die if they didn’t.

The saddest sentence I ever found was in a graveyard on Bredon Hill. HER ABUNDANT VIRTUES WOULD HAVE ADORNED A LONGER LIFE.

Listening’s reading if you close your eyes.

I’ll always remember meeting Dad tonight. I know I will. Will Dad? Or will, for Dad, tonight’s Goose Fair just be one more of the trillion things you even forget forgetting?

Dancing’s a brain the dancers’re only cells of. Dancers think they’re in charge but they’re obeying ancient orders.