Bring the House Down Quotes

“Now I hold my life in my hands and feel its warmth. I breathe gently on the embers. I make them glow.”
― Charlotte Runcie, Bring the House Down

“I wanted to see some places I hadn’t been to for years, to inhabit them again as the person I was now.”
― Charlotte Runcie, Bring the House Down

“To everyone whose work I've ever reviewed: thank you for making something worth talking about.”
― Charlotte Runcie, Bring the House Down

“Josh, too, looked different. His jaw was set wider than I remembered. Maybe I was just too used to seeing him only on video calls, and the reality of Josh in three dimensions upset the connections in my brain.”
― Charlotte Runcie, Bring the House Down: A Novel

“And journalism is full of shame. Before AI transcription software was invented, transcribing my interviews used to take hours, because I spent most of the time having to pause the tape to claw at my face in embarrassment. Oh, my poorly phrased questions, my laughter in the wrong places, my miss of an obvious opportunity for a follow-up, my rudeness, my nerves, my clear lack of knowledge of the subject, my stupid voice! But sometimes, when I was listening back, a moment would glimmer that I hadn’t noticed when I was in the room. A moment when maybe I’d held back from a question, out of a desire to be nice, and the interviewee had responded by giving me more than I’d asked for. They would volunteer some story, some frustration or inspiration, that would expose slightly more of the person than they’d intended to reveal. Any interview is a transaction, but people can’t help being people. Sometimes a connection happens without either of you realising it.”
― Charlotte Runcie, Bring the House Down: A Novel

“Never go back to the places you felt safe as a child,” he said. “You realise how unsafe you really were. But then, maybe it’s irresistible.”
― Charlotte Runcie, Bring the House Down: A Novel

“And then we’d had Arlo. And even though we’d planned for him to be there, when it happened, everything became a lot more complicated than I’d thought it would be. The escape path was overgrown and lost.”
― Charlotte Runcie, Bring the House Down: A Novel

“Sex once is a mistake, but twice with the same person, with a distance of time in between, is an affair. I hadn’t crystallised the difference before, but when I was confronted with it, I knew it instantly and instinctively. After the second time, he said Coralie hadn’t contacted him again, and Josh had avoided her as much as possible.”
― Charlotte Runcie, Bring the House Down: A Novel

“But how is that different from any other relationship that doesn’t work out?” Alex stared down the road in the direction the drag queens had gone, in the direction of the Sainsbury’s where Hayley had bought the gin. The lights from the pub on the corner were brightening as the night deepened. “Every break-up happens because the other person gradually realises that you were awful all along. The only difference is that she discovered I’m awful all at once, on day two.” That reminded me of something my friend Zara had said to me once, when we were renting a flat together when I first moved to London. It was a tiny, damp, third-floor ex-LA flat in Leyton which we rented from an Austrian woman. When I told Zara I’d got the job at the paper, she’d said, “With every job I’ve ever had, if I’d known beforehand exactly what that job entailed, I never would have taken it. But still, congratulations.”
― Charlotte Runcie, Bring the House Down: A Novel

“I read somewhere that some men only love their children for as long as they love the mother of their children. I tried not to think about that too much.”
― Charlotte Runcie, Bring the House Down: A Novel