Status Updates From The Waves (Collins Classics)

Both despise me for copying what they do; but Susan sometimes teaches me, for instance, how to tie a bow, while Jinny has her own knowledge but keeps it to herself. They have friends to sit by. They have things to say privately in corners. But I attach myself only to names and faces; and hoard them like amulets against disaster.

“There is nothing staid, nothing settled, in this universe. All is rippling, all is dancing, all is quickness and triumph.” (31)
“I shall be a clinger to the outsides of words all my life.” (33)
Coherence is a (learned) trap?

in a dangerous and wild and unpredictable world, there is a comfort in (certain) fantasy, even in its violent wildness, which didacticism and the dull constancy of reality (its “profanities”) constantly contradicts (and opposes and threatens…)

when “death” becomes real and not simply the imagined end of a hero’s narrative, the soliloquy played onto the shadow of an adoring audience, what then…?

“When I am grown up I shall carry a notebook - fat book with many pages, methodically lettered. I shall enter my phrases. Under B shall come ‘Butterfly powder.’ If, in my novel, I describe the sun on the window-sill, I shall look under B and find butterfly powder. That will be useful.” (24)
“Among the tortures and devastations of life is this then - our friends are not able to finish their stories.” (26)

Increíble. Delicioso.