Only Forward Quotes

“How many times have you tried to talk to someone about something that matters to you, tried to get them to see it the way you do? And how many of those times have ended with you feeling bitter, resenting them for making you feel like your pain doesn't have any substance after all?

Like when you've split up with someone, and you try to communicate the way you feel, because you need to say the words, need to feel that somebody understands just how pissed off and frightened you feel. The problem is, they never do. "Plenty more fish in the sea," they'll say, or "You're better off without them," or "Do you want some of these potato chips?" They never really understand, because they haven't been there, every day, every hour. They don't know the way things have been, the way that it's made you, the way it has structured your world. They'll never realise that someone who makes you feel bad may be the person you need most in the world. They don't understand the history, the background, don't know the pillars of memory that hold you up. Ultimately, they don't know you well enough, and they never can. Everyone's alone in their world, because everybody's life is different. You can send people letters, and show them photos, but they can never come to visit where you live.

Unless you love them. And then they can burn it down.”
― Michael Marshall Smith, Only Forward

“When you're born a light is switched on, a light which shines up through your life. As you get older the light still reaches you, sparkling as it comes up through your memories. And if you're lucky as you travel forward through time, you'll bring the whole of yourself along with you, gathering your skirts and leaving nothing behind, nothing to obscure the light. But if a Bad Thing happens part of you is seared into place, and trapped for ever at that time. The rest of you moves onward, dealing with all the todays and tomorrows, but something, some part of you, is left behind. That part blocks the light, colours the rest of your life, but worse than that, it's alive. Trapped for ever at that moment, and alone in the dark, that part of you is still alive.”
― Michael Marshall Smith, Only Forward

“You haven't seen untidiness until you've seen a room where gravity has failed twice in different directions.”
― Michael Marshall Smith, Only Forward

“You love because you want to need someone the way you did when you were a child, and have them need you too. You eat well because the intensity of taste reminds you of a need satisfied, a pain relieved. The finest paintings are nothing more than the red head of a flower, nodding in the breeze, when you were two years old; the most exciting film is just the way everything was, back in the days when you stared goggle-eyed at the whirling chaos all around you. All these things do is get the adult to shut up for a while, to open for just a moment a tiny sliding window in the cell deep inside, letting the pallid child peep hungrily out and drink the world in before darkness falls again.”
― Michael Marshall Smith, Only Forward

“Everything you've done, everything you've seen, everything you've become, remains. You never can go back, only forward, and if you don't bring the whole of yourself with you, you'll never see the sun again,”
― Michael Marshall Smith, Only Forward

“When you’re a child the world forbears you, allows you your flights of imagination, your feelings of specialness. But sooner or later the privileges are withdrawn, and all you’re left with is a stunned bitterness at the realisation that you’re just the same as everybody else.”
― Michael Marshall Smith, Only Forward

“You know when you've got nothing in particular to do, nothing to stay awake for? When your life is just routine and it doesn't feel like it belongs to you, how you feel tired and listless and everything seems like too much effort?

Well, it's like that, but it's much worse, because everything is much worse these days. Everything that's bad is worse, believe me. There are whole Neighborhoods out there where no one has anything to do all their lives. They're born, and from the moment they hit the table, there's nothing to do. They clamber to their feet occasionally, realize there's nothing to do and sit down again. They grow up, and there's nothing to do; they grow up, and there's still nothing. They spend their whole lives indoors, in armchairs, in bed, wondering who they are.”
― Michael Marshall Smith, Only Forward

“All non-smokers seem to live in the belief that smokers have wandered naively through life, bereft of the knowledge that their habit is extremely bad for them.”
― Michael Marshall Smith, Only Forward

“Everyone’s alone in their world, because everybody’s life is different. You can send people letters, and show them photos, but they can never come to visit where you live. Unless you love them. And then they can burn it down.”
― Michael Marshall Smith, Only Forward

“What you have to understand is that sometimes things are the way they seem. By that I don't mean that they aren't the way they might be thought to be, beneath what you see, necessarily, what I mean is that. . . Christ: I"ll start this again.
Sometimes, things are not the way they seem. You look at something and it seems straightforward, and you think you understand it, and it's only later you realize that the truth is different.
Okay: no prizes for observation so far.
Sometimes, on the other hand, you look at something and you know already it's not the way it seems. You know because you understand what you"re seeing, you"re aware of the context and you realize that appearances are being deceptive.
But sometimes, and this is the important sometimes, that's wrong.
Sometimes, when you think you"re being deceived, you"re not. Sometimes things are the way they look, however surprising that may be. And sometimes that can make all the difference in the world.
Let me put it another way. Why does a journey always seem quicker coming back?”
― Michael Marshall Smith, Only Forward

“When you’re born a light is switched on, a light which shines up through your life. As you get older the light still reaches you, sparkling as it comes up through your memories. And if you’re lucky as you travel forward through time, you’ll bring the whole of yourself along with you, gathering your skirts and leaving nothing behind, nothing to obscure the light. But if a Bad Thing happens part of you is seared into place, and trapped for ever at that time. The rest of you moves onwards, dealing with all the todays and tomorrows, but something, some part of you, is left behind. That part blocks the light, colours the rest of your life, but worse than that, it’s alive. Trapped for ever at that moment, and alone in the dark, that part of you is still alive.”
― Michael Marshall Smith, Only Forward

“People always find it so frustrating that there’s no structure they can see, that they just have to follow the river downstream and see what they find. They want to know the plot so they can guess the end, because they’re afraid of what it might be. I can understand that, even though I know it’s not the way things work. I never know what the hell’s going to happen next, but I can live with that.”
― Michael Marshall Smith, Only Forward

“What they are is a small tablet about six inches square, which has a screen in it. As you walk it shows a scrolling digital map of the area you’re in, telling you what each store you pass sells, who lives in what block, the whole works, updated by small beacons on every street corner. If you tap in a destination the screen shows you a red line to follow, and the tablet whispers at you to tell you when to make a turn.”
― Michael Marshall Smith, Only Forward

“When you don’t know what you want you clutch at everything, thinking that because it’s new it will be better, and not realising that a nobody won’t be happy with anything.”
― Michael Marshall Smith, Only Forward

“The more you get to know someone, the more there is to dislike. If you get to know them well enough, you hate them.”
― Michael Marshall Smith, Only Forward

“The light of life shines up from your birth, and I’d left so much in the way that I had stood for years in twilight, isolated and alone while the person I’d once been still stamped and raved, blocking the light and poisoning the sun.”
― Michael Marshall Smith, Only Forward

“Everything you’ve done, everything you’ve seen, everything you’ve become, remains. You never can go back, only forward, and if you don’t bring the whole of yourself with you, you’ll never see the sun again.”
― Michael Marshall Smith, Only Forward

“The mind is like a pool of water, and rain falls as you age. The water gets deeper, and looks so still: occasionally some stray thought or impulse betrays its depths, but seldom. But deep down underneath, right at the bottom, there may be something lying on the bottom. Something that died a long time ago, something rotted and foul that belies the pool’s still surface. Alkland had just seen a bubble rise from the bottom, had smelt the stench of decay: and when that happens, you don’t want other people to come too close, in case they smell it too.”
― Michael Marshall Smith, Only Forward

“would be on top of me like a ton of heavy things.”
― Michael Marshall Smith, Only Forward

“three”
― Michael Marshall Smith, Only Forward