Himself Quotes

“Words are capable of flying. They dart through windows, over fences, between bar stools and across courtyards. They travel rapidly from mouth to ear, from ear to mouth. And as they go, they pick up speed and weight and substance and gravity. Until they land with a scud, take seed and grow as fast as the unruliest of beanstalks.”
― Jess Kidd, Himself

“She's put him out like a cat a million times, but like a cat he has a habit of slinking back and curling up into the warm corners of her mind.”
― Jess Kidd, Himself

“It is a truth universally unacknowledged that when the dead are trying to remember something, the living are trying harder to forget it.”
― Jess Kidd, Himself

“He has the look of someone whose soul got up and walked away in disgust a long time ago.”
― Jess Kidd, Himself

“Once upon a time Sister Mary Margaret had answered a loud knocking at the door of the orphanage. It was very early one morning, before the city was awake. All the pigeons had their heads tucked under their wings and all the rats were curled up tight behind the dustbins. All the cars and lorries were asleep in their garages and depots, and all the trains slumbered on their tracks at Connolly Station. All the boats bobbed gently in the harbor, dreaming of the high seas, and all the bicycles slept leaning along the fences. Even the angels were asleep at the foot of the O’Connell Monument, fluttering their wings as they dreamt, quite forgetting to hold still and pretend to be statues.”
― Jess Kidd, Himself

“For the dead are always close by in a life like Mahony's. The dead are drawn to the confused and the unwritten, the damaged and the fractured, to those with big cracks and gaps in their tales, which the dead just yearn to fill. For the dead have secondhand stories to share with you, if you'd only let them get a foot in the door.”
― Jess Kidd, Himself

“My creative juices only flow freely in the dark. My mind is like a mushroom: if you shine the light of the one true church on it, well then, inspiration may not spore at all.”
― Jess Kidd, Himself

“An interview with Quinn is like fighting a yellow snake in a sandpit.’ Desmond”
― Jess Kidd, Himself

“Those we have lost return to us in their own time.”
― Jess Kidd, Himself

“And the trees still hold strong. Their canopies drinking every soft grey sky and their roots spreading down deep in the dark, nuzzling clutches of old bones and fingering lost coins. They throw their branches up in wild dances whenever a storm comes in off the bay.”
― Jess Kidd, Himself

“It is the smell of a million mould-blossomed pages, of a thousand decaying bindings, of a universe of dead words.”
― Jess Kidd, Himself

“... for love is just as heartbreaking as pity.”
― Jess Kidd, Himself

“Mahoney sees that she is locked down and bolted. If she were a castle she would have wound up the drawbridge and woken the archers by now.”
― Jess Kidd, Himself

“For the dead don't change or grow. They're just echoes of the stories of their own lives sung back in the wrong order: arsewards. They're the pattern on closed eyelids after you turn away from a bright object. They are twice-exposed film. They're not really there, so cause and effect means nothing to them.”
― Jess Kidd, Himself

“And the woman finally saw that what is terrible can also be beautiful”
― Jess Kidd, Himself

“But the trees knew, and so did the bees, for they know all things.”
― Jess Kidd, Himself

“the higher the mind the trickier the knickers.”
― Jess Kidd, Himself

“Wait until I am seemly, Visitor. I am preparing a respectable facade.”
― Jess Kidd, Himself

“Mrs. Cauley takes back the list and shuts it in her purse. "Isn't that why we need an interrogation? now, will we start with the eejit-looking ones? They always know who the culprit is. They always know all along, it's just that no one bothers to ask them." She adjusts the feather in her headdress. "We should have this sewn up by teatime. The location of the body, the perpetrator, you name it."

Mahony laughs. "You're sure?"

"I'm Miss Marple, remember? With balls.”
― Jess Kidd, Himself

“It’s the hottest April in living and dead memory. So hot that the crows are flying with their tongues hanging out of their heads.”
― Jess Kidd, Himself

“For the dead are always close by in a life like Mahony's. The dead are drawn to the confused and the unwritten, the damaged and the fractured, to those with big cracks and gaps in their tales, which the dead just yearn to fill. For the dead have secondhand stories to share with you, if you only let them get a foot in the door.”
― Jess Kidd, Himself

“But then there is the grim line of her shoulders and the iron tilt of her chin and the spite in her eyes.....If she were a castle she would have wound up the drawbridge and woken the archers by now.”
― Jess Kidd, Himself

“the higher the mind the trickier the knickers”
― Jess Kidd, Himself

“Bridget exhales and waves her cigarette at him. "What you have to understand, Desmond, is that this is Mahony we're talking about. He's a Dublin orphan, which means that he could survive on an iceberg in just his socks.”
― Jess Kidd, Himself