The Boy on the Bridge Quotes

“He had already learned to read, but now he learned the pleasure of stories which is like no other pleasure—the experience of slipping sideways into another world and living there for as long as you want to.”
― M.R. Carey, The Boy on the Bridge

“Things don’t end, after all. They only change, and you keep changing with them.”
― M.R. Carey, The Boy on the Bridge

“Here was the Russia she'd loved since childhood, the dark, violent, passionate place where the life of the mind and spirit were as real as the life of the body.”
― Natalie Standiford, The Boy on the Bridge

“Sanity is a suspended state, moored in nothing but itself. You test the ground an inch in front of you, move forward as though it's solid. But the whole world is in freefall and you're in freefall with it.”
― M.R. Carey, The Boy on the Bridge

“It rains on the just and the unjust. Nothing you can do but turn your collar up.”
― M.R. Carey, The Boy on the Bridge

“The point of history, the very essence of it as a field of study, is to find correspondences. You look at the past so that you can understand it, and through it you come to a better understanding of your own time.”
― M.R. Carey, The Boy on the Bridge

“If everyone always knows what they’re doing and acts in a perfectly rational way, how did most of world history happen?”
― M.R. Carey, The Boy on the Bridge

“They think he doesn’t understand. That he can’t see. They can’t see him.”
― M.R. Carey, The Boy on the Bridge

“She thinks: all journeys are the same journey, whether you're moving or not. And the things that look like endings are all just stations on the way.”
― M.R. Carey, The Boy on the Bridge

“She thinks: all journeys are the same journey, whether you know it or not, whether you’re moving or not. And the things that look like endings are all just stations on the way.”
― M.R. Carey, The Boy on the Bridge

“Pain has no agenda at all. It teaches us nothing, except what hurts. And if you can’t avoid the things that hurt then what use is the lesson?”
― M.R. Carey, The Boy on the Bridge

“They are in hell, but the devil is on their side.”
― M.R. Carey, The Boy on the Bridge

“To go mad, to lose your mind, which is the only thing that’s really yours because it’s really you … That would be an inexpressibly terrible thing. And at the same time it would be nothing, because you yourself would be unable, from within that damaged state, to recognise or reflect on it.”
― M.R. Carey, The Boy on the Bridge

“Sanity is a suspended state, moored in nothing but itself. You test the ground an inch in front of you, move forward as though it’s solid. But the whole world is in freefall and you’re in freefall with it.”
― M.R. Carey, The Boy on the Bridge

“It’s absolutely necessary to know who you are, as the basis for knowing anything else.”
― M.R. Carey, The Boy on the Bridge

“If he says something that isn’t true, he is bringing uncertainty into the world. He is blinding the people around him to a small part of the truth—and every part of the truth is important. You can’t complete a jigsaw if one of its pieces has been swapped out for a piece of a different jigsaw.”
― M.R. Carey, The Boy on the Bridge

“She is an anomaly. Anomalies explode old theories and engender new ones. They are dangerous and glorious. Greaves”
― M.R. Carey, The Boy on the Bridge

“Loyalty is just the wheels on the bus ... meaning that it keeps things moving but it's neutral when it comes to the direction they move in.”
― M.R. Carey, The Boy on the Bridge

“She decided that day to study Russian, the language of violence, terror, and absurdity. She knew she would never be bored.”
― Natalie Standiford, The Boy on the Bridge

“what’s so great about leaving your mark on things. You have a life and then it ends and you’re dead. Living it is the point, not proving to other people that you were there.”
― M.R. Carey, The Boy on the Bridge

“People only make sense from the inside, Foss has found. And that’s if you’re lucky.”
― M.R. Carey, The Boy on the Bridge

“The daytime burns with a single fire, and a lot of the time it burns fitfully. The night is a million suns exploding all at once, igniting the whole sky.”
― M.R. Carey, The Boy on the Bridge

“Do we always fret about our partners’ exes? he wonders. And do we extend that to everyone they knew before they met us? Is it their whole past we’re jealous of, as though we want them to be born again when we walk into their lives? It’s a depressing thought. He has believed himself to be bigger than that, and a whole lot more rational.”
― M.R. Carey, The Boy on the Bridge

“The world is information. An endless torrent. Whatever escapes you becomes something you will never completely understand.”
― M.R. Carey, The Boy on the Bridge

“You shouldn’t kill a man without being aware of the possibilities, the futures, you’re snuffing out. The younger the target, the more of those possible futures there are. Killing a child is like killing a vast multitude.”
― M.R. Carey, The Boy on the Bridge

“The world is information. An endless torrent. Whatever escapes you becomes something you will never completely understand. Other”
― M.R. Carey, The Boy on the Bridge

“admires her honesty, which turns white lies into red roadkill.”
― M.R. Carey, The Boy on the Bridge

“He is not a politician. He’s not even somebody who weighs his words. But he is, in the end, a conformist. A man whose centre of gravity can’t easily be found because he has never taken the time to work out where it is he wants to stand. He only knows his limits when he actually meets them, in the world. As,”
― M.R. Carey, The Boy on the Bridge

“Overthrow is a nicely judged word. It suggests a wrestler being flung to the mat. That only happens when you move outside your centre of gravity. Your enemy can’t throw you if you have your feet firmly planted. Which”
― M.R. Carey, The Boy on the Bridge

“You look at the past so that you can understand it, and through it you come to a better understanding of your own time. If you’re lucky, sometimes you can even extrapolate to possible futures.”
― M.R. Carey, The Boy on the Bridge