Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha Quotes

“It was a sign of growing up, when the dark made no more difference to you than the day.”
― Roddy Doyle, Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha

“Fuck was the best word. The most dangerous word. You couldn't whisper it. Fuck was always too loud, too late to stop it, it burst in the air above you and fell slowly right over your head. There was total silence, nothing but Fuck floating down. For a few seconds you were dead, waiting for Henno to look up and see Fuck landing on top of you. They were thrilling seconds-when he didn't look up. It was a word you couldn't say anywhere. It wouldn't come out unless you pushed it. It made you feel caught and grabbed you the minute you said it. When it escaped it was like an electric laugh, a soundless gasp followed by the kind of laughing only forbidden things could make, an inside tickle that became a brilliant pain, bashing at your mouth to be let out. It was agony. We didn't waste it.”
― Roddy Doyle, Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha

“Dreaming was only nice while it lasted.”
― Roddy Doyle, Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha

“We parked our bikes on verges so they could graze.”
― Roddy Doyle, Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha

“Sometimes, when you were thinking about something, trying to understand it, it opened up in your head without you expecting it to, like it was a soft spongy light unfolding, and you understood, it made sense forever…”
― Roddy Doyle, Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha

“I was the ref. I was the ref they didn’t know about. Deaf and dumb. Invisible as a wall. I wanted no one to win”
― Roddy Doyle, Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha

“If you were going to be best friends with anyone - Kevin - you had to hate a lot of other people, the two of you, together. It made you better friends.”
― Roddy Doyle, Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha

“I knew all the books in the house. I knew their shapes and smells. I knew what pages would open if I held them with the spine on the ground and let the sides drop. I knew all the books but I couldn't remember the name of the one on my head.”
― Roddy Doyle, Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha

“I jumped on Sinbad's bottle. Nothing happened. I didn't do it again. Sometimes when nothing happened it was really getting ready to happen”
― Roddy Doyle, Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha

“They'd had a fight again.
– You'll have your work cut out for you, I said.
One of their quiet ones.
She laughed.
Where they whispered their screams and roaring.
She laughed at me.
And she was always the first one to cry and he kept stabbing at her with his face and his words.”
― Roddy Doyle, Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha

“World War Three Looms Near.”
― Roddy Doyle, Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha

“The worst was when there was nothing in the sky, nothing to grab, blue blue blue.”
― Roddy Doyle, Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha

“But it wasn’t boring like this; I loved it, sitting there doing nothing. There wasn’t even anything to look at except the houses across the road.”
― Roddy Doyle, Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha

“If you were going to be best friends with anyone – Kevin – you had to hate a lot of other people, the two of you, together. It made you better friends.”
― Roddy Doyle, Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha

“They were our friends because we hated them; it was good to have them around. I was cleaner than them, brainier than them. I was better than them.”
― Roddy Doyle, Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha

“They didn’t understand. They didn’t understand that robbing had nothing to do with what we wanted; it was the dare, the terror, the getting away with it.”
― Roddy Doyle, Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha