Purdy Patrick

“Oh, how naturally teenagers took to self-destruction! To the bottomless sensation of waiting, no new messages from the message machine, all manner of restless ennui. To be young was to long for the future, to grieve it and fear it in equal measures.”
― Olivie Blake, All Manner of Thing Shall Be

“Something wasn’t right. She kept on losing sight of the things in front of her—the kettle, the pump, the range—as if she were walking outside her thoughts. One minute she would be looking at the faucet; the next minute, her memory of Rosa’s whistling was so acute that it shut out the room. Her brain felt densely corridored. There was something going on in there.”
― Kaliane Bradley, A Visit to the Husband Archive

“Books,” John told her, a few days into his stay, “are a technology for importing, housing, and spreading ideas. Sometimes an idea takes a whole narrative and cast of characters to make itself understood. Sometimes it just needs one line, such as ‘Manuscripts don’t burn.”
― Kaliane Bradley, A Visit to the Husband Archive

“John had encouraged her to read the books in his box, but reading the books wasn’t like reading municipal notices or rotation schedules. It seemed to require a different style of attention altogether. Whenever she tried to read one, she experienced a pseudoblindness; she could still see, in the sense that there were shapes and colours in front of her, but her brain stopped processing the information about them, and a wall of sorts rose between her and the world.”
― Kaliane Bradley, A Visit to the Husband Archive