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Everything was from duty, nothing from love. Duty killed you in the end.
Theo wondered if those people who were destined to die young had some kind of premonition of the shortness of the hours and that gave their life an intensity, a seriousness like a shadow.
Novels gave you a completely false idea about life, they told lies and they implied there were endings when in reality there were no endings, everything just went on and on and on.
Time was a thief, he stole your life away from you and the only way you could get it back was to outwit him and snatch it right back.
It was the last in the terrace, on the run-down side, and the walls between it and the house next door were so thin that you could hear every fart and cat mewl from the neighbor’s.
The worse the service, the more Theo tended to tip. He supposed it was a character weakness. He thought of himself as a person made almost entirely out of weaknesses rather than strengths.
That was how history worked, wasn’t it? If it wasn’t written down it never existed.
Jackson had never had an allergy in his life (except to people, perhaps).
Boys took a long time to become men but daughters were women from the kickoff.
What did you do when the worst thing that could happen to you had already happened—how did you live your life then?
How did this happen to her? How did she become this person she didn’t want to be?
she knew plenty of teachers who saw children as an annoying by-product of the profession rather than its raison d’être.
it was hard to believe that this would go on forever. Nothing else did, so why should this? And you couldn’t stay one step ahead all the time. It didn’t matter how long you were lost. Sooner or later you would be found.
surely there wasn’t just one person in the whole world who was meant for you? If there was then the odds against your ever bumping up against him would be overwhelming,
