The Making of Henry Quotes

“Is that what lives on longest, the sadness? The proof of our being weak, not the proof of our being strong?”
― Howard Jacobson, The Making of Henry

“Henry believes he knows exactly when the ninety-four-year-old woman in the neighbouring apartment dies. He hears her turn off. Until now he has not been able to distinguish her from her appliances – her washing machine, her vacuum cleaner, her radiators, her television. But the moment she gives up the ghost he detects the cessation of a noise of which he was not previously aware. A hum, was it? A whirr? Impossible to say. There is no word for the sound a life makes.”
― Howard Jacobson, The Making of Henry

“There is no word for the sound a life makes.”
― Howard Jacobson, The Making of Henry

“It is from his grandmother that Henry learns that punctuation can be a weapon. With a comma you can hurt someone.”
― Howard Jacobson, The Making of Henry

“Out, in Henry’s view, is a madhouse. Historians of social lunacy will confirm that this is literally the case, that the mad have been let out of the asylums and allowed to walk the streets. But Henry doesn’t mean that. By mad, nerve-strung Henry means revving when you’re stationary and driving with your hand on your horn – read that sexually if you like, but Henry has in mind incessant honking – he means text messaging the person standing next to you, or being wired up so that you can speak into thin air, conversing with God is how it looks to Henry, or wearing running shoes when you’re not running, or coming up to Henry with a bad face and a dog on a piece of string and asking him for money. Why would Henry give someone with a bad face money? Because of the dog? Because of the string?”
― Howard Jacobson, The Making of Henry

“In my experience people who can’t stop making jokes about their identity aren’t easy with it. The man of the world accepts who he is and the influences which have made him, and then gets on with living in the world.”
― Howard Jacobson, The Making of Henry