Staircase Quotes

“Trouble with our sort, you're never left with anyone. S'an impossibility. It's an empty room when whatever friends you've got go first.”
― Charles Dyer, Staircase

“I jotted all those names on a paper. I got to thinking, you see. What a funny name, I thought—Chard Seerly; and Arhcy Selder with a Y; and D’Arcy Relshe! They all spell Charles Dyer. They’re all you, Charlie! You’ve never mentioned anyone who isn’t an anagram of Charles Dyer.”
― Charles Dyer, Staircase

“During the writing I began to feel, I think, that Charlie is alone. Nobody else! This should not affect the reader’s sense of reality, because I believed in my characters; loved them; they were very, very, real inside me. Yet only one person wrote them!—so it could be just Charlie in a grubby little barber shop. No Harry! And perhaps that Case, that Incident, exists only in Charlie’s mind. Isn’t the Chief Constable of the Summons an anagram as well?”
― Charles Dyer, Staircase

“After you die, I believe you begin dreaming; and that’s what heaven is—dreaming everyone’s saying nice things…saying you’re handsome and manly and admiring your hair. But I think I’d know it was only a dream, Charlie. I’d spend infinity telling myself lies and knowing it. My God, that’d be hell.”
― Charles Dyer, Staircase

“Terrible terrible thing—not to be liked; not to be even necessary. If a great big nozzle sucked me into oblivion, there isn’t a clock’d stop ticking.”
― Charles Dyer, Staircase

“Once, when Mother needed a hairnet, I popped to the Chemist on the corner; and…you know…I didn’t like asking for it…I said it was for my new wife. And ever after they kept asking: ‘How’s your wife?’ Oh, I loved it. Loved having a wife. It made me belong.”
― Charles Dyer, Staircase

“How can you tell a man with hairs curling over his collar that you only wanted someone to hug; something to love?”
― Charles Dyer, Staircase

“HARRY: At least, I don’t cut my toe-nails in the kitchen.
CHARLIE: Once! Once in all my life.
HARRY: It was enough.”
― Charles Dyer, Staircase

“HARRY: And you repeat yourself. You say everything twice.
CHARLIE: Who does? Who does?”
― Charles Dyer, Staircase

“God help us all and Oscar Wilde.”
― Charles Dyer, Staircase

“If the Twelve Disciples were reincarnated, you’d arrange them in a pop group.”
― Charles Dyer, Staircase

“It's just that I feel that Sex...all Sex could have been better arranged.”
― Charles Dyer, Staircase