A Star Called Henry Quotes

“Head in the book. Nose sliding down the valley between the pages.”
― Roddy Doyle, A Star Called Henry

“She was in the book again and, by the time she got to page-turning time again, she'd forgetting I was there.”
― Roddy Doyle, A Star Called Henry

“The dockers were the hardest men in the world. Their guts were lined with coal dust and pitch. They came to work armed with blades, iron bars, bale-hooks, their own knuckle-dusters. They drank to wake up in the early houses before work. And they drank during work, washed down the world’s dirt and grit and fed the headaches. And after work when they went to collect their wages, in Paddy Clare’s or Jack Maher’s, the dockers’ pubs, they drank what was left in their hands after the stevedore had finished doing his sums. While their children starved - and their wives too, on top of being fucked by the stevedore after he’d drunk his cut of the wages or sold them back to Paddy Clare - the dockers drank themselves into fighting form and looked around for some poor goat to take the place of the stevedore. Glasses of whiskey went into the pints of porter. And God help any poor eejit who walked in on top of a roaring docker swinging his belt. Harmless men ended up in the river and some of them never climbed out; they went under the lock and fed the mullet. The dockers were beyond the law. They knew no rules except their own and the stevedore’s. They were heady company for a young man who’d been left all alone by the dead. And I started to keep up with them.”
― Roddy Doyle, A Star Called Henry

“The family trees of the poor don't grow to any height.”
― Roddy Doyle, A Star Called Henry

“I was going. I couldn’t stay here. Every breath of its stale air, every square inch of the place mocked me, grabbed at my ankles. It needed blood to survive and it wasn’t going to get mine.”
― Roddy Doyle, A Star Called Henry

“—If you just watch and listen you’ll get better answers.”
― Roddy Doyle, A Star Called Henry

“Jesus, she said. -Are you in there at all? -I am, Annie, I told her. -Bursting to get out.”
― Roddy Doyle, A Star Called Henry