The Ocean at the End of the Lane

by Neil Gaiman

“That’s the trouble with living things. Don’t last very long. Kittens one day, old cats the next. And then just memories. And the memories fade and blend and smudge together

Past is just a swirl of things happening all at the same time inside our heads, as much as we can remember a "moment" in particular, we never get to live it again or precisely point it out in our past.

“I dunno what blessed good a man would be! Nothing a man could do around this farm that I can’t do twice as fast and five times as well.”

Nice touch of feminism well placed by the Hampstock lady family. They are the main characters in this book and they deserve it.

We picked some pea pods, opened them and ate the peas inside. Peas baffled me. I could not understand why grown-ups would take things that tasted so good when they were freshly-picked and raw, and put them in tin cans, and make them revolting.

It just pinpoints something that I hadn't think about until my early twenties. Raw veggies and fruit are usually awesome by their own, but usually we put them in plastic packages and do this and that to them until they are uncanny and disgusting. Sometimes it's nice to taste the real thing

I thought, This is the kind of water you can breathe. I thought, Perhaps there is just a secret to breathing water, something simple that everyone could do, if only they knew. That was what I thought. That was the first thing I thought. The second thing I thought was that I knew everything.

Is he on acid?

the peculiar crinkling of space on space into dimensions that fold like origami and blossom like strange orchids, and which would mark the last good time before the eventual end of everything and the next Big Bang, which would be, I knew now, nothing of the kind.

Seems so

reality I knew was a thin layer of icing on a great dark birthday cake writhing with grubs and nightmares and hunger.

“Nothing’s ever the same,” she said. “Be it a second later or a hundred years. It’s always churning and roiling. And people change as much as oceans.”

Yes I'm changing

“You don’t pass or fail at being a person, dear.” I put the empty cup and plate down on the ground. Ginnie Hempstock said, “I think you’re doing better than you were the last time we saw you. You’re growing a new heart, for a start.”

Every person and personality is valid. We just need different lenses to appreciate them by what they are.