The Intruders Quotes

“When you meet someone you love, then you change for good. That’s why the other person will never know or understand the earlier you, and why you can never change back. And why, when that person starts to go, you’ll feel the tear deep in your heart long before your head has the slightest clue what’s going on.”
― Michael Marshall Smith, The Intruders

“Deep inside each of us is a part that mistrusts order and craves the relief of seeing the world shatter into the chaos it believes lies underneath all along.”
― Michael Marshall Smith, The Intruders

“The greatest hazard of all, losing one’s self, can occur very quietly in the world, as if it were nothing at all. No other loss can occur so quietly; any other loss—an arm, a leg, five dollars, a wife, etc.—is sure to be noticed. —Søren Kierkegaard The Sickness Unto Death”
― Michael Marshall Smith, The Intruders

“But digging up the roots of chaos is like saying it’s not the moment the car hits you that’s important, or the split second when you step off the curb without looking. You can argue that as soon as you stopped checking when you crossed the street, that’s when the trouble really began. The moment of impact is what you remember, however. That breathless instant of screech and thud, the second when the car hits and all other futures are canceled.”
― Michael Marshall Smith, The Intruders

“My father used to claim that inanimate objects hate us and plot our downfall behind our backs. He was probably right.”
― Michael Marshall Smith, The Intruders

“Part I The greatest hazard of all, losing one’s self, can occur very quietly in the world, as if it were nothing at all. No other loss can occur so quietly; any other loss—an arm, a leg, five dollars, a wife, etc.—is sure to be noticed. —Søren Kierkegaard
The Sickness Unto Death”
― Michael Marshall Smith, The Intruders

“In the months of her slow death, she’d made little notes in a book, jotted down memories of her early life, as if gathering fallen leaves to her chest, to stop them from being scattered and lost by the coming winds.”
― Michael Marshall Smith, The Intruders

“There is an intimacy to carrying someone else’s blood on your hands, in seeing their eyes as they realize the sharp and finite limit to how much more of the world they themselves will see.”
― Michael Marshall Smith, The Intruders

“It’s not true that everyone wants to confess a crime, but most people do want to tell something of their story, to stop hiding for just a while.”
― Michael Marshall Smith, The Intruders

“But how could I bring it up? I’d actually be asking something else, and I wasn’t sure I was ready to open that box. Even if it turned out to be empty, it would never be properly reclosed. Utterance is a one-way street. Questions can never be unasked.”
― Michael Marshall Smith, The Intruders

“Make the most of it, kiddo, she found herself thinking. A nightmare is just a nightmare. You don’t know anything about real sadness yet.”
― Michael Marshall Smith, The Intruders

“The telephone, though a remarkable device, is not designed for real communication, for the heavy lifting of personal interaction. For the big stuff, you have to be in the same physical space. Questions are asked and answered on a chemical level: Our species lived and loved and dealt with each other for millions of years before we developed language. It’s still only ever background music.”
― Michael Marshall Smith, The Intruders

“the kind of woman who would breeze into the bathroom while I was shaving and say, “Yo, shithead—you going to fix that shelf like you said, or do I have to take you back to Husbands-R-Us?”
― Michael Marshall Smith, The Intruders

“Growing older, it appears, does not mean growing up.”
― Michael Marshall Smith, The Intruders